“For God’s sake,” said Gaynor furiously. “I don’t want to hear about Carla or bloody Gavin or you telling me I’ve made a mistake again. I KNOW Victor has another woman. OK? I KNOW. And if I ask him then he’ll come up with some smarmy, bloody, smooth-talking excuse of the sort you keep suggesting and he’ll just make out I’m paranoid again.”
She breathed deeply and clenched her fists. “I could kill him,” she said painfully.
Sarah heaved a sack of potatoes to the end of the kitchen, pausing briefly to put a hand on Gaynor’s knee. “So what did you do?”
Gaynor looked at her miserably. “Nothing. I just went into – you know, automatic, like nothing had happened. Sort of pretended it hadn’t. I put it back where I’d found it and I went downstairs and after a bit he said – shall we go to bed and I, I just…”
“And how was he? I mean did he, did you…”
“Yes.”
Oh yes – Victor had made love to her again. If you could call it that. She’d had the feeling they had both been somewhere else. She was in the bottom of his wardrobe, shrieking why oh why – who are you, you curvaceous witch? And he – well, who knows where he was.
It was a careful, civilised, decorous act after which he’d fetched her another glass of wine and been solicitous about tucking the duvet around her shoulders. She was left confused and empty and dissatisfied. Victor went to sleep the moment he laid his head on the pillow and left very early the next morning.
“You have to find a way to sit him down and talk to him properly,” said Sarah, tipping carrots on to the stainless steel work surface. She picked one up and sliced the top off it. “Just tell him how you feel.”
Gaynor got down from the freezer and began to pace up and down the quarry tiles. “That’s what everyone says, isn’t it? Every counsellor, every magazine, every bloody radio phone-in. Sit down and talk to him!” She put on a mocking sing-song voice. “As if it’s that’s easy. But what do you do if he won’t talk? If he tells you to shut up, or changes the subject? If he walks out of the room, or drives back to London? It’s all very well in theory, but some men won’t talk. Some men won’t even listen.”
“I know,” said Sarah, deftly peeling. “I do know, but I can’t think what else to suggest.”
Gaynor changed the subject. “How was your drink with Richard?”
Sarah looked at her sympathetically for a moment then shrugged. “Lovely. We had a really nice time. How many words has he spoken to me since? Think a of a number between one and five!”
“Perhaps he’s playing it cool.”
Sarah pulled a face and gouged out a channel along the length of the carrot in her hand. “I don’t want him to play it cool. I want to be given the chance to, thank you very much. I want him in here bringing roses and chocolates and champagne – asking hopefully if I might have an evening free…”
“In your very overcrowded diary…”
“Which has ‘get very sweaty in kitchen’ down for four nights a week and ‘stand behind bar looking vacant” for two more!”
They both laughed. Sarah turned the carrot over and scored it three more times.
“What are you doing to those?”
“Giving them fluted edges.”
“Looks like a lot of palaver.”
“It is. Why don’t you do some – take your mind off things.” Sarah held out a peeler.
“You’ll have to make him jealous,” said Gaynor, looking at the piles of vegetables with distaste. “Flirt madly with all the customers.”
“Like who?”
“Doesn’t matter who.” Gaynor half-heartedly pulled the peeler along a carrot. “Or have a passion with Jack. Or Benjamin!”
Sarah snorted. “Not that I’d want to cradle-snatch or anything.”
“Richard needs to see how alluring you are.”
“Hmmm – I’d like to see how alluring I am. Especially after a six hour stint in here. I’m surprised Benjamin can keep his hands off me.”
“Did I hear my name spoken in vain?” Benjamin appeared in the doorway, a crash helmet under his arm.
Sarah blushed. “Gaynor’s being silly,” she said.
Gaynor put the peeler down. “Gaynor’s off. Here, Benjamin – help make these carrots look pretty. I’m no good at this stuff.”
“She means she’s bone idle,” said Sarah but Benjamin was already tying his apron strings behind him.
“It will be my pleasure.”
Upstairs, Claire was polishing the brass bell they used to ring time. “Want a job?”
Gaynor shook her head. “Not especially. But I’ll be back later,” she added placatingly, as Claire went on rubbing. “I’ll do something then.” She still wasn’t entirely sure of Claire. Could never quite work out what lay behind the business-like exterior.
Sarah came up the stairs behind her. “Can you come in early tonight, Gaynor? Get set up with Claire so I can stay upstairs a bit longer with the children? Charlie’s being very difficult – I think I’m just not spending enough time with him. Or any of them. I mean of course they all love Grandma and Susannah the baby-sitter is terrific but…” She sighed. “Luke’s monosyllabic, and poor little Bel – she’s with my mother so much she’s practically forgotten what I look like. I’m going to have to –”
The phone jangled loudly, interrupting her. Gaynor leaned over and picked it up.
“Good morning, Greens.” She listened for a moment. “Hello? I’m sorry do you have a cold or are you trying to be obscene? Pervert,” she said, banging the phone back down. “Could hear someone there but they weren’t speaking.”
“Gaynor, for goodness sake,” said Claire crossly. “That was probably a potential customer on a bad line.”
Gaynor shrugged. “They’ll have to phone back, then.”
Sarah looked worried. “Or it could be...”
“What?”
“Someone did that the other day. And there was a funny message on the answer-phone yesterday morning when I came down. Just a sort of breathing, snuffly noise.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Gaynor asked. “Let’s hear it.”
“I erased it – didn’t think much of it at the time. But now I wonder…”
“Could be anything.” Claire was brisk. “Might be some saddo – heard that three women have got the place, or it might be a wrong number from someone with adenoids.”
“When I went riding as a child,” Gaynor said, “the riding school was always getting funny calls. It was all that stuff about girls on horses. I was out once with my friend Karen and this guy exposed himself to us.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows. “Were you scared?”
“No – all the little kids were crying but we were pretty fascinated really.”
Sarah shook her head. “I might have guessed.”
“Anyway, one of the other kid’s fathers went to the police and they said the ones who flash it about are the last ones to do anything with it.”
“Nobody’s flashing anything yet,” said Claire firmly. “Let’s put it down to a wrong number or a bad line, eh?” She stared meaningfully at Gaynor.
“Sure.” Gaynor glanced at Sarah, who was still looking troubled. “Probably never happen again anyway.”
Sarah hugged Gaynor at the door. “See you this evening then, yes?” She smiled. “You’re much better at flirting with customers than I am.”
Gaynor looked at her. “Think I’m losing my touch, actually.”
Sarah squeezed her arm. “What are you going to do about Victor?”
Gaynor shifted her handbag to the other shoulder. “I don’t know yet. Just keep watching him, I suppose. There was the lipstick and now I’ve seen this. But I’ll wait for something else. Something he really can’t wriggle out of – ’cos I’ll have the proof.”
“And what will you do then?” asked Sam quietly, looking past her out of the window, relighting one of his minute squashed-looking cigarettes with a battered-looking Zippo. He ran a hand down Brutus’s spine as
the cat prowled along the arm of his leather chair. “If you go all out to find out what he’s doing and you do prove he’s being unfaithful, then you need to have thought about what you’re going to do next.”
“Well, I’ll…” Gaynor put down her teacup and walked over to the window. “I’ll confront him.”
“I thought you’d done that already,” he said mildly.
“Yes, but this time I’ll have proof and he won’t be able to deny it.”
“And then?”
She looked away from him. “I don’t know yet. I suppose it depends what he says. I’ve got to catch him first. I’ve got to find out where he goes and who he sees. I even phoned up a detective agency.” She laughed selfconsciously. “But they wanted an absolute fortune to follow him and I couldn’t spend that sort of money without him knowing about it.”
“You don’t want to touch them, anyway,” said Sam. “There are other ways of finding out. But first you have to be sure you really want to know.”
“What ways?” Gaynor asked. She looked at a sketch for a greengrocer’s sign that was propped on Sam’s drawing board. It was a mass of bananas and cherries.
“Because once you find out,” he said, “if there is anything to find out, you can’t un-know it. And sometimes, there are some things that are better not to know.”
“What ways? How can I catch him?”
“Put on a wig and follow him yourself?” Sam gave up with the lighter and dropped the dying cigarette end into an ashtray.
Gaynor looked at him. “Seriously!”
Sam sipped at his tea and considered her for a moment. “Depends how far you want to go,” he said slowly. “There’s always a paper trail. Credit card statements, mobile phones, mileage on the car… a judicious phone call or two to work can turn up a lot – you can find out all sorts with a little probing. And then – you can turn up where he is and see what you find, though I wouldn’t advise it.”
Gaynor looked at him and suddenly smiled. “Were you a private dick yourself before you were a sign-writer?”
“No, I was a policeman.”
“I wasn’t a very good one,” he said, when they both had more tea. “I didn’t fit in very well.” He coaxed a new roll-up into life. “I could do the hard man act but my heart wasn’t in it. Spent too much time wanting to ask ‘Why?’ I was supposed to just lock ’em up and get on with the next one but when you pick up a little sixteen-year-old drug addict who’s become a tom to get her next fix or a twenty-fiveyear-old black guy who’s spent more than half his life in custody and gets picked up weekly and the dull fury comes off him in waves, you do stop and wonder what the hell it’s all about.”
Gaynor smiled wryly. “You weren’t a policeman round here then?”
He gave an answering shrug of amusement. “I was in the Met.”
“My grandfather was in the police,” she said.
He looked at her with sudden interest. “Was he? Your mother or father’s side?”
“My father’s.”
He gave a bitter sort of laugh. “And what did your father do?”
“Became a geography teacher.”
“Good for him.”
“It wasn’t good for him. He spent his whole working life in a state of deep depression or rage or despair or all three.”
“And what did your mother do?”
“Tried to hold it all together.”
“Have you got siblings?”
“A brother.”
“What does he do?”
“You like to know your job descriptions, don’t you? When he’s taking his medication he works for Reading council in the IT department. When he’s not, he stays at home to traumatise my mother. Or runs off somewhere saying he’ll kill himself.”
Sam gazed at her and his eyes were suddenly full of something she hadn’t seen there before.
“That sounds very difficult for everyone.”
She sat down on the arm of the sofa next to his chair. He’d picked up the small wooden sign he’d been painting when she arrived and balanced it back on his knees. Now he took a fine brush from the table, dipped it in paint, and began delicately filling in the tiny scales on a little blue fish peeping out from a frond of seaweed.
“Is he younger than you?” he asked, his head bent.
“Yes, David’s thirty-five now. It’s sad, you know, really he’s a sweet, gentle person. I always wanted to protect him when we were younger, stop my father yelling at him. But he’s very difficult when he’s ill. It’s hard not to lose patience. Of course he can’t help it – but it’s so wearing. He becomes paranoid and obsessive – you can’t reason with him and it’s a nightmare trying to get him to take his drugs again or get him anywhere near a doctor. We’ve had to have him bundled screaming into an ambulance before.” She shuddered.
Sam carried on painting but his voice was soft. “Seen a bit of that myself. Bad enough when you don’t know them. Must be awful if it’s someone close.”
Gaynor bent down to stroke Brutus, who had wrapped himself around her legs.
“Yes.” She gave a brittle laugh. “Childhood was lots of fun – there was always someone weeping or wailing or threatening to cut their throat. My poor mother had to try and pacify them both and of course whatever she did, it was never enough…” She stopped as Sam laid down his paintbrush.
He put the sign carefully on the floor and reached out a hand. His fingers were warm and dry and surprisingly smooth as they closed around her wrist. He squeezed it gently, looking at her with sympathy and understanding.
“No wonder you want so much attention.”
9. Côtes du Rhône
Poetic on the palate, peppery and dramatic.
“More eggs and smoked salmon!” Claire shot through the swing door into the wine bar kitchen and grabbed at a tray. “God, it’s bedlam up there.”
She slapped a sheet of paper down on the steel work surface and picked up the plates of bacon. “We’re almost out of fresh orange juice and the coffee machine just can’t keep up!” She kicked at the swing door. “And Gaynor…”
Sarah pushed back the hair from her face. Claire didn’t have to say any more. Gaynor hadn’t been put on the planet to be a waitress – Sarah could picture her upstairs now, wafting about with plates of breakfast, never sure who had ordered what; but nobody oozed more charm when things went wrong, nor, come to that, got bigger tips. Last week she’d managed to empty a plate of avocado prawns into some guy’s lap and forgotten to give him and his mate any cutlery whatsoever to eat their main course with, and he’d still left her ten quid.
Today they were busier than ever. It was nearly the end of Folk Week and they were all exhausted. They’d been there since seven and opened the doors at half-past, letting in the first eager beavers who wanted to get a ringside seat for the Poetry Breakfasts which began promptly at eight under the guiding hand of Veronica, a leading light in the Broadstairs Poetry Ring and beater of the drum (literally) for the right of every individual – however un-lyrical – to bring his or her verse to the wider audience.
Upstairs, Gaynor frothed up milk at the coffee machine and watched as Veronica spread her knees beneath a midnight-blue kaftan adorned with mirrored moons and stars and stuffed a small set of bongos down between them.
“Can we begin?” she called in a high quivering voice. She began to beat the drums with the flat of her hand. “As always,” she cried, “when I pass the drum, stand up and share…”
It was the same lot every morning and the drum always started its circuit at a serious-looking young man with spots and long hair, called Darwin, who would rise to his feet and spout whatever he’d written yesterday. The actual poetry – though largely incomprehensible – was bearable, Gaynor thought, but his tortured explanations of why he’d written it, which usually took twice as long as the recital, were mind-numbing.
“I was moved to compose this yesterday afternoon when I was particularly struck by a piece of flint juxtaposed against chalk in the light of a
rock pool…” he droned.
Gaynor smiled at the other poets beginning to shift and twitch while Veronica gazed on rapturously.
“Thank you Darwin,” she said reverently when he’d finished and Gaynor carried cappuccino and toast over to the table beside her. “Keep the beat going. Pass it on.”
Gaynor went back behind the bar as the drum was thrust towards a tall gothic-looking woman in purple. Veronica beamed. “Ah, Serena – what have you got for us this morning?”
“Thank God that bloke with the stammer’s not here today,” Gaynor said to Claire, as she loaded a tray with coffee cups. “I thought the poor bastard was never going to end.”
Claire gave a sudden giggle. “They were still here at lunchtime.” She consulted her pad. “Gaynor, have you brought up the muffins for table eight yet? And there’s a couple of tables need clearing. Oh heavens, and that bloke who wants the cheese omelette is waving his arms again. Yes, how can I help you?” She turned as more people approached the counter. “Six teas? Coming right up…”
It was not ten yet and already Gaynor felt unbearably hot as she belted up and down the stairs with plates of eggs and warm rolls, trying to keep up with the never-ending stream of requests for teas and coffees. “Whose idea was this, anyway?” she growled at Claire when they got a minute’s respite.
“We can’t afford to turn any business away at the moment,” said Claire crisply. “This week’s a gold mine for us – we’ve got to make the most of it.”
“I know, I know, but I’m knackered already.” Gaynor took a foot out of its mule and wiggled it about. “My legs are killing me.”
She was supposed to stay on all day. They were open until midnight. Jack and a couple of the students were coming in from lunchtime to do the bar and waitressing but Claire had said they might still need Gaynor if they were very busy. And she could hardly refuse when Sarah and Claire had been here the whole time.
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