The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories

by Penny Edwards

  She couldn’t return to England. She’d come to realise that as she carefully painted, each stroke just gently slowing down her heartbeat a little every time. He’d ended the relationship while they were miles apart, but it had been a cold and unceremonious dumping of her that relied on a phone and a text message and, as such, had, if anything, encouraged her determination to stay where she was, even as she sobbed. While her brushes changed people’s faces, something she particularly liked doing, her mind whirled around mistakes she’d made. It was true she could have texted replies when her instinct had told her responses weren’t needed, but, even though her time away was short, the distance was too much for him. He wasn’t someone who was used to distances when they involved people close to him. So probably she should have seen that with her in France and him in England the relationship was destined to fail. She would have to go back to her course soon or she would fail that as well. She just wanted to be quiet, so painting pictures and faces was just the job.

  In the English café things were different. In the English café people talked, though this being an English café conversation was discreet. It was a bookshop too, so many just read and as comfy chairs were provided, some could be there for quite a while, the hours ticking by without them realising. There were days when she found the peace comforting; in her broken state she found the undemanding company of others reassuring, but at other times this quiet disconnection allowed her to bathe in broken-hearted thought and she’d conclude that a voice demanding her attention or a busy road would have proved to be a useful distraction. She sat at the small round table on an equally round chair, waiting for the person she was going to meet and glad that this time it was Madame Maes, for this eighty-six year old certainly had the ability to distract her.

  The café called itself the English Café; it wasn’t just a name adopted by locals who thought it an obvious name for a place that put tea above coffee. A quaint sign of a teapot, in Union Jack costume, hung over the heads of passers-by, perfectly still or wafting to and fro if a breeze took hold. It sold tea of sorts imaginable and not quite so, with plants and fruits proud to stand alone or dancing with one another to produce wonderfully different flavours and cakes, generally of the sponge and filling variety, which looked far too delicious to remain where they were. The books were written, without exception, in English, and she found she was greatly comforted by this familiarity. It struck a homesick note, as if someone had tapped her shoulder and uttered, “Mind the gap.”

  Madame Maes had had one thing in common with Martha. She wished to know another language better. They were both aiming for what they agreed was a workable fluency. For madame, it had largely something to do with the war, an everlasting gratitude to English speakers, who had saved her country and returned her family to a way of life that was bearable and lacking in fear. For Martha, she had always loved this country, its art and fashion and culture, and hoped, if she ever felt better, she would love it again. They agreed, therefore, to speak half of each meeting using the other’s language and there was usually a natural point at which the changeover took place.

  The bell of the shop door tinkled and madame entered, waving as soon as she spotted her friend. It wasn’t unkind to say she looked like a witch because this was truly the kind of witch you would want to get to know. There was a difficulty in not thinking it when even taking a cursory glance. A lithe, slender figure that, though it was in its eighties, could, more than likely, nip up a mountain smartly or cycle as quickly as an Olympian. At the very least, give them a run for their money. She had long white hair that fell not only downwards onto a slightly tatty cardigan but also had a way of travelling outwards, a smile that showed barely any teeth while those on view rose or fell individually like separate stalagmites or stalactites in a dark cave, these a musty yellow, peppered with little black spots. Her eyes were dark and stared at everyone inquisitively, but far from fearful; they were like the promise of a warm fire from black coals, encouraging the subject of her attention to feel alive and keen to deliver, probably because there was rarely anyone else who expressed such an interest in what they were about to say. Martha smiled to herself as she came nearer and thought a broomstick should, without doubt, be madame’s transport of choice. She got up, walked towards where her French friend was standing by the counter and offered to buy her a cup of tea. But her heart was heavy. Like every conversation, this would be hard work and the problem was entirely hers for Mme Maes was easy company.

  Mme Maes adored coming here, and looked forward to each visit as she might a holiday, because everything about it offered a contrast to her traffic-noisy flat, with its quiet tones and delicate teacups and the fact that reading was one of its main raisons d’être. Her own life hadn’t had as many books in it as she would have wished, which had been brought on by a combination of reasons, some of her own making, like laziness or a desire to fit in too much with those who had no desire to pick up a book. But she loved a challenge and was both enthralled and amused at her inability to understand many of the titles, which wasn’t because she couldn’t understand the words but was unaware of the cultural nuances.

  “Please may I have a cup of Earl Grey tea?” she answered in perfect English and with great ceremony. She enjoyed the eccentricity of a tea that not only paired up with the English aristocracy but had a delicate perfume, which could be properly enjoyed only, she’d always thought, as an afternoon delight. “Yes,” she then said, “Thank you,” when Martha asked if she would like a slice of cake. “A piece of Victoria Sponge would be beautiful,” and her thoughts turned to their queen of that name and dirty, Dickensian streets, many of which she now suspected had been made-over and looked nothing of the sort. She looked at Martha who might as well have had on a T-shirt with “I have a broken heart” written all over it. Her eyes were teary and her lips quivered. Thank God she was too old for all of that. There were some things that adorned younger adulthood that she’d put in the rubbish bin long ago and never regretted a minute of it.

  They sat down. She offered Martha some of the sponge but wasn’t surprised when her friend declined. Broken hearts had never given her an appetite. She would attempt to take Martha’s mind to other thoughts, hard though that might be. In French she said, before not quite finishing her first delicious mouthful, “Who do you think’s going to be a film star?” They invariably began in madame’s language as she maintained she always had much to tell and wanted to make sure she got it out before she forgot it. Today was no exception.

  “You, madame?” Martha replied, her mouth moving slightly upwards, though it remained uncertain.

  “Get away with you, my dear friend,” the octogenarian retorted, but she was enjoying the thought. “No, Hercule,” she continued with great enthusiasm.

  “Who?” Martha couldn’t think of a Hercule that both she and madame knew. There was the owner of the patisserie they liked, but she was certain he was Raoul. And even if Hercule had been his name, it wouldn’t have suited him. There was the guy who came here who madame was convinced was a spy working for the British on the basis that he’d been visiting the café more often since a local newspaper had mentioned how vulnerable French cities had become to the threat of terrorism and he asked very odd questions like had she walked to the café by the underground tunnel too small for humans? She’d suggested to madame that probably the monsieur had mental health problems, something she’d quickly dismissed, telling her quite curtly that madness wasn’t the answer to everything. She was sure it wasn’t. And she was even more certain this wasn’t the guy destined for stardom.

  She shrugged. This was too much like hard work. Didn’t madame know the pain she was in? How relevant was this conversation to anything she was experiencing? She hated this effort. She didn’t care. She really didn’t care. She thought madame could distract her, but she was wrong. This was just barmy. She drank some tea and tried to calm herself. The state she was in had nothing to do with madame and
everything to do with that arsehole, so she tried to make an effort, even though every word fell from her lips as heavy as a case of books. She said she didn’t think it was either Raoul or the guy they’d seen here. Who else did they both know?

  “We know Madame Laurent,” she replied and she gently prodded Martha’s shoulder, as she sometimes did. It was a signal to her that she knew something Martha didn’t. Then she did as she often did and held her hands tightly against her ears and asked her please not to tell if she’d already found the fact out on the Facebook thingy. Couldn’t an eighty-six year old ever be the first to convey news?

  “Madame Laurent?” she asked, feeling weary of madame’s penchant for quizzes as a form of conversation.

  Madame was tickled. Hah! She did know something before a computer. “But not her. Think who is always with madame.”

  She thought for a few seconds and then it came to her. “Oh.” She smiled at her French friend for she had solved the mystery.

  Madame nodded and said, “Woof, woof.” It was pretty much the same in both languages.

  “But how?” she continued, now genuinely curious as to how the Labrador had succeeded where thousands had failed.

  “I don’t know,” madame replied. “You’d have to ask Madame Laurent that.”

  “I don’t really know her to speak to.”

  Madame smiled to herself. The English and their politeness. “Well, then, I don’t know. All I do know is that Hercule is going to be in this film they’re making. Monsieur De Clercq, you know Monsieur De Clercq, he’s the one I told you about whose son got knocked down a year or so ago by some idiotic driver. He’s all right now by the way, but anyhow, Monsieur De Clercq and I were sitting having a chat down by the fountain, you know how we natter, blah, blah, blah, and Madame Laurent walks by, you know the way she has, long and lean, head up in the air so you feel like you’re a little bee, buzzing round her feet? Well, she was walking past us, I waved, ‘Hello, madame,’ but she didn’t hear me. Hah! Well, I’m sure you know this about madame, she doesn’t tend to ‘hear’ everyone, and old Hercule was plodding along faithfully by her and monsieur goes, ‘Lucky dog,’ and I said, ‘What, with madame as his mistress? I’d say, poor dog, poor dog.’ ‘Oh well, yes, sure,’ he says. ‘No, not that. Old Hercule’s in this film they’re making that there’s so much goddamn fuss about. I tell you, my son, he says there’s not a chance for any guy at the moment with all these foreign film stars and their entourages running about.’”

  Martha wanted to say stop to madame as she was, at best, only catching half of this, but she didn’t have the energy to understand or call a halt.

  She hoped she’d caught some things madame had said or this whole meeting would be a waste of time. So, without anyone to stop her, madame continued, though she was picking up on a slightly perplexed expression coming from the other side of the table, so she slowed down as she did when she drove and spotted a police car. Not once had she ever been caught.

  “My dear friend, it suddenly clicked. Clicked. It means, I suddenly knew, I realised. I realised that here’s my poor heartbroken English friend and here, right here, is a film crew.”

  Far from showing a drop of enthusiasm, Martha just remained stony faced and took another sip of her drink. Madame could see this was going to be a long haul, involving many more meetings. Undeterred, she carried on.

  “But to return to your question, my dear friend, I’m not exactly clear from what Monsieur De Clercq said what were the thoughts in the director’s head when he decided to put Hercule in his film. I think it’s only a walk-on part,” and she grinned. “So, what of this broken heart of yours?” she asked in English, for she could see that this was going to be the only subject that would be of any interest to Martha and broken-hearted conversation needed, she was of the opinion, to be spoken in the language of the one whose heart is scattered about. If repair was needed, she wasn’t sure that a second language could do the job.

  She looked earnestly at the broken face, eyes as full as any she’d ever seen. An insect could swim in them. Her poor English friend was in a mess and there wasn’t much she felt she could do, but she did teach her the French for “time heals” and “you’ll get through this”. She had the words but also the experience. The problem was, she wasn’t sure if her friend was listening. And she didn’t want to get too “wise old birdy” about it because there was nothing more annoying to young ones and, frankly, nothing more depressing to her because she didn’t want to feel she knew everything. If that was the case, what was the point of her sad little life?

  “I don’t believe you don’t care,” she said when Martha said she didn’t care about anything. She had that English sentence perfectly and she was quite pleased with herself, not without any thought of Martha’s sadness but because she was glad her friend didn’t have to make the effort of correcting her when she was at such a low ebb. It was true to say, though, that she had to content herself with not learning any new words today. Martha could barely manage a word.

  *

  It was another day and another sponge. This time coffee and walnut, which was a real pleasure in madame’s eyes, not to mention her stomach, because, though she did appreciate a cup of tea, she would’ve been dishonest if she said she didn’t miss a little taste of the old café. Books were being read, cutlery tinkled and English words floated all around her, some whispered, others more assured, offering apologies for being late, thoughts on the rain and the odd recommendation. “Have you read this? I think you’d love it.” Well, that’s fraught with danger. Madame smiled to herself, remembering a friend who’d scolded her for a recommendation she’d once given, asking madame if she could possibly give her those ten hours and twenty minutes – she’d actually counted – back again as she’d hated every bit of the book. Madame had just sat quietly and patiently through this diatribe because she obviously couldn’t give those hours back to her friend as a gift and, if she’d had a closer friendship, could have edged towards mentioning that her friend didn’t have to finish it and that, in general, she might do well to veer towards the opinion that reading, even if it is not entirely enjoyable in a particular instance, is never wasted. What the experience had taught her was not to recommend anything to that person again who had chosen a rather disparaging honesty over any sense of graciousness.

  She was waiting for Martha but had deliberately arrived early so she could soak up an hour or so listening to others and give herself permission to eat and drink alone. It felt wonderfully modern. Her mother would never have approved, not even in such a respectable establishment as this. Martha had done this for her. She had forced her out of her… what was it she said? Comfort zone, that was it, and she wondered what that was in English. She would ask her. As she was pondering comfort zones and being separated from them, Martha walked in. The door tinkled, in a quaint English way, and one or two people looked up for a moment or two, then carried on with what they were doing when they saw the latest entrance was nothing to do with them.

  “I’m sorry, I started…” Madame Maes coughed over a bit of walnut that was tucked discreetly in the sponge. She quickly cleared her throat while Martha unwrapped a scarf from her neck. “I started without you, I hope you don’t think I was being rude. I was just interested to see what it felt like being here on my—”

  “That’s fine,” Martha said quietly.

  “I was out of my comfort zone. How do you say that?”

  Martha told her.

  “Comfort zone,” she repeated.

  They then reverted back to French, maintaining the unspoken tradition of beginning in madame’s language.

  “Can I get you anything?” Martha asked.

  “Another cup of tea would be good. Here.” Madame reached for her bag. “It’s my turn.” There were protests on either side, but it was finally agreed that madame should do the honours and as she watched Martha walk to th
e counter, she couldn’t help notice the poor girl’s weight loss. She needed to get some food inside her, that was for sure.

  When the drinks and the very slim – no, thin – girl returned, madame started the conversation. She knew from the last time not to ask Martha how she was and she certainly wasn’t going to comment on the jumper that was now far too big for her.

  “So, the filming’s begun. Down, as you might expect, by the fountain. But five o’clock in the morning! Monsieur De Clercq, he said you can’t get a quiet cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Well, you know, normal first thing, seven, seven-thirty. No, and the other day, he said he went down to his favourite café around his usual time and they’d actually run out of his favourite almond croissants because there’s so many busy bodies down there trying to get a look-in before they start their day’s business. Have you seen them?”

  Martha said she hadn’t, but a friend of hers had. It was the friend whose face she’d turned into a series of the letter Q with a small 10 by each for a board-game-themed party she was going to. As she painted them, she kept thinking, Hey, shitbag, here’s ten questions for you, but she got to question one, “How long have you known her?” and got stuck there for the entire painting session, forgetting to answer her friend’s question, “Why don’t you come to this party?” because she was so engrossed in answering the question for the bastard, which at the lowest point was, “As long as we’ve been together.” She told madame they might go down tomorrow or the next day, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to bother.