Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons

by Lorraine Jenkin

  The Professor mopped the flecks of spittle that had begun to collect at the sides of his mouth. He looked down at the Mickey Mouse watch that his students had given him when he had been continually late for tutorials – ten past two. Damn, the little sod had made him late now, as well as cross.

  He stood up quickly, not noticing as a deft waiter stopped his chair crashing loudly to the floor behind him. He stared at the downcast lad sat opposite him and suddenly felt like a bastard.

  “Look, Charles,” he said more gently, “I’m sorry; I’m late and will have to run. I just think you should ponder on a bit more on this whole psychology thing. Perhaps it’s not for you, and believe me it won’t get any more interesting as time goes by – or easier. Maybe it’s an old fart’s thing, eh? For people like me?” Rizzo raised a small smile at the proffered get-out clause.

  “I must go; think about it will you, eh? And, if you are still keen, we’ll talk again and see what we can salvage from this, er, your, er, research, and get something out of the Board in terms of an agreement? In the meantime, thanks for lunch and I really must go.” He gathered his jacket and was about to stuff the thesis into the carrier bag that served as a briefcase – but then thought twice and quickly put it down in a, “well, I won’t be needing that, will I?” kind of way. And then he was gone, leaving a shell-shocked Rizzo facing an empty future and a bill that he was sure had originally been intended for the Psychology Department’s petty cash tin.

  The inanimate couple at the next table smiled at him with an, “it’s OK, laddie, you can always join the army,” look and then raised their eyebrows delightedly to each other – the most intimate interaction they’d had in days.

  Rizzo felt he should perhaps sit there until the waiters gathered at the counter politely signalling closing time, or walk for miles along the canal towpath or maybe just lose himself in a dingy bar, thinking about his future. Had the Professor been right? Was he really destined for other things? Perhaps architecture was the way forward? Instead, his thoughts fell to the video arcade two blocks down that he had passed on the way and he set off to find some aliens – with zip-up cardigans and a Chinese takeaway carrier bag with pens falling through a hole in the bottom – to zap.

  Rizzo’s mood had not been improved by the succeeding visit to his parents’ house. It was always a trip he was reluctant to carry out – not that he disliked his mother and father, but they always asked so many questions – questions that required difficult answers; ones that expected him to explain his existence and what exactly it was that he did with his days. He just wished he hadn’t mentioned the meeting with his tutor in his phone call to his mum or had at least played down the importance of its outcome.

  His education was always a hot topic, mainly because his parents knew so little about him and the life that he led deep in the bowels of Dorset and therefore conversation was struggle enough without having to avoid what should be such neutral topics as his studies. He had been glad to find his mum home alone; she could be fobbed off a little easier as she was more interested in subjects that may result in grandchildren.

  Nicholas and Dawn Riser’s house was designed for hospitality and entertainment. However, Dawn never lost any opportunity to allude to the gaucheness of her ignorant husband and Nicholas never saw any reason not to bite back. Therefore, friendships didn’t develop and business was more lucratively done elsewhere. Divorce had been regularly mentioned, but both were too spiteful to make the other’s day by granting it. Thus, when the prodigal son turned up, he was lavished with all the attention due the phantom guests and this simply exhausted him and left him eager to retreat from the spotlight.

  Both parents considered it fair game to run the other down in front of him and if both happened to be in the room, it generally happened at the same time. And so references to “your bloody mother” belted out over “if your father wasn’t so stupid” leaving Rizzo sat in the middle with his head in his hands.

  When he had been younger, he had occasionally bolted in tears, shouting “Just shut up, shut up, both of you!” but this only resulted in the pair yelling, “Now look what you have done (you stupid man/you bloody woman).” But these days it tended to wash over him as his mind was transported elsewhere, to his own world where stupid men and bloody women didn’t exist.

  On the instance in question, however, his mother was able to get a good few digs in before her opponent came home from work. His college work was brushed over as Rizzo managed to distract her into detailing the problems with the recent kitchen refurbishment, (your stupid father couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. Should have left it to me, etc), but when his father arrived home, there was no skirting it.

  “Yeah, we chatted and he, well, he agrees with me that, perhaps, well, that psychology may not be the best subject for me,” Rizzo dropped quietly into the conversation. “He suggested architecture,” he added enthusiastically, trying to accentuate the positive.

  “What?” his father had bellowed, brushing aside his wife’s concerns about letting the boy finish, and his being an ignorant pig of a man. “I pay for you to sit on your arse for two years, only to be told that it ‘may not be the subject for me’?” His impression of a squeaky-voiced Rizzo brought cries of derision from his wife and sulks from Rizzo, his eyes cast to the floor.

  “By the time you actually bloody get any qualifications, you’ll be too bloody old to work!” he roared. “Oh, shat ap,” he added to his wife’s screech about talking it over quietly like adults. “Well?” he shouted at Rizzo, who had shrunk back to an eight-year-old boy, “are you going to finish the bloody thing or not?” Rizzo shrugged. As a child he had found that a shrug usually gave his parents the answer they had expected, whatever it may have been.

  “Right, then,” his father barked, asserting his power over the pathetic Mummy’s Boy sat on the stool between them. He reached into the back pocket of his silvery grey work trousers and removed his wallet. Glancing inside, he removed a large wad of cash and threw it down onto the green marble. “There – that is what I made today. Take it; that’s your last. Christ, where the hell have I gone so wrong, to have such a ponce for a son? That’s your bloody influence, that is,” he said, grasping an opportunity to offend his wife. “There, take your cash and spend it wisely – as I said, that’s the bloody last you’ll get from me,” and the now red-faced man had stuffed his wallet back into his pocket and stormed from the room, grabbing his large bunch of keys as he went.

  “That’s right, storm off,” shouted his wife after him. Until she realised that he had done just that, and quietly added, “Good riddance,” with a smile on her face, glad to have a chance to discuss his failings with her only son.

  Rizzo had listened to her for a couple of minutes as she had happily zipped around the kitchen, refilling the coffee machine and fetching him a clean plate and telling him to ignore the pig of a man, he just had no social skills. He often wished that he could be as hard bitten as his parents, able to cast aside such disagreements and altercations as readily as they seemed to. He looked at his mum, noticing her expensive clothes and the excessive jewellery that had been given out of tradition rather than love.

  He watched her as she chattered away, the earlier argument rolling from her shoulders, leaving not a mark on her dry clean only outfit. He suddenly felt, more than ever before, that he simply didn’t belong there, not in this house, not with this family.

  Rizzo stood up: “Mum?” He had interrupted. “Mum?”

  “Yes, dear,” she said, turning and seeming surprised that he wasn’t sat listening supportively to her every word.

  “I hate it here. I really do.” He wasn’t emotional or pitiful; he was simply matter of fact, as if he were saying he didn’t like the colour of the curtains. “You hate dad, dad hates you, and you both want me to hate the other. What pleasure is there in that for me? Really? Why on earth do I want to be sat here, listening to you two bickering about whatever the topic of the day is?”

  �
��Oh, Charles; that’s your father all over I am afraid, he…”

  “No mum, it’s both of you. Sorry. Can’t do it any more.”

  And Charles Antony Riser turned and walked out, being careful to pick up both the wad of cash and his bag. He opened the polished wooden front door with its insets of stained glass and stood for a few seconds on the threshold. Then he walked casually down the front steps and crunched down the gravel drive, his bag thrown over his shoulder. He ignored his mother’s whispered cries of apology from the front door; she couldn’t shout her pleas for his return, lest the neighbours should hear.

  So, he had spent the Friday night in a draughty railway station, the coldest he had ever been in his pampered life, perversely enjoying the chill that represented the removal of his safety net. Feeling that he was now standing alone in the world, he carefully spent some of the (thankfully large) wad from his father on two bars of chocolate from the platform vending machine. He had then settled down into a dried puddle of tramp’s piss, using his holdall as a pillow and a plastic carrier bag found in a bin as a giant slipper to cover his chilled feet.

  He was woken at various points throughout the night as trains spilled their increasingly unpleasant loads into the cold cloudless night, accompanied by the sounds and smells of discharging stomachs and bladders. He yearned to find a group of other gentlemen of the road – to share a bowl of piping hot soup provided by a kindly charity worker and to warm his hands over a brazier of donated coals. Instead, he eventually succumbed to the hunting out of the all-night café that he sensed was in the vicinity: his fellow station gang all seemed to be holding polystyrene cartons of chips, spread with the hottest chilli sauce known to man.

  By the morning, he had had about enough of life on the road and yearned for his cosy bed and the comfort of the Winnie the Pooh biscuit barrel in Lettie’s kitchen. He caught the earliest train available and then couldn’t resist a quick stop off in Exeter for the fine shops, restricting himself to a few books and some practical wardrobe staples – hence the three-pack of tee shirts that wouldn’t date and would just wear and wear.

  He ended up hitching a lift with the three girls from his table, driven by an irritated father who had sat in the soulless car park at Axminster Station for an hour as his unapologetic daughter had given him the wrong arrival time. Rizzo had tried to make polite conversation with the man, but could tell that he thought Rizzo was just a “time wasting” friend when he couldn’t answer the question “So, what do you do, then?”

  He thankfully fled from the car at the earliest opportunity and made his way down Lyme’s steep high street. A warm wind was whipping up stray litter and the air carried the feeling that the heatwave of the past few days was about to break. Discarded chip wrappers bowled across the road and polystyrene cartons, picked clean by the ever-present gulls, skated across the pavements in absolutely no hurry to begin their long process of biodegradation. Rizzo embraced the oncoming storm; he felt that it reflected the storm in his own life, it would be a clean sweep, a spring clean, a fresh start.

  He ambled down the pavement looking into shop windows with a different, more restrained view than usual. He felt a twinge of comradeship with the tourists that he mingled with as they withdrew from the beach, shedding the burnt skin from their shoulders like lepers. These people were now his kind; having to work hard for a living, stealing a few days in the sun when their pennies allowed, setting aside a few pounds a week towards their luxury. Foreign holidays and exploring other cultures were, for him, no more.

  However, it would never be his habit to arrive at the bottom of the high street without at least a few paper bags of treats. Some goat’s cheese, a tub full of olives with chillies or a freshly-baked loaf (with seeds). But, today was the first day of the rest of his life and his resolve was strong. He quite enjoyed the new experience of budgeting and therefore resisted his usual foray into the delicatessen and the baker’s, which was selling off the day’s remaining fresh cream cakes for just half price.

  Seeing a sign in the window of a chip shop for Staff Wanted, the gravity of his situation hit him. He had £785 in his pocket and that was it – no savings that were not in his father’s name and no skills. His curriculum vitae was a list of starts, but no finishes and certainly nothing of substance to show for his endeavours and his father’s money. His last qualifications attained were his rather poor A Levels; he hadn’t done particularly well in these, having always been aware that he could retake them at a later date, should he wish to pull up the grades. If he could have had another column for the Reason Why, then, he thought, his CV would look quite acceptable – but his father would call them excuses and “excuses don’t pay the mortgage”.

  So, it was eventually a rather dejected Rizzo that pushed open the front door and called a quiet “Hullo”. He followed the sound of chattering and giggles to the back garden where he found Lettie and Dougie lounging on a couple of beach deckchairs. They both had knotted handkerchiefs on their heads and Doug’s jeans were rolled up to mid calf.

  “Hi,” said Rizzo, “mmm, something smells good?” he said, hoping for the usual “join us”. It wasn’t forthcoming.

  “Yes, Doug’s cooking me his special, which I have a feeling includes a couple of seagulls and an old bit of pasty crust that he found on the beach earlier.”

  Dougie flicked the remains of Molly’s stick at her in return and said, “I’ll have you know, this dish includes the finest ingredients to be found in Lyme!”

  “In which case, fish heads marinated in the armpit of a deckchair attendant and then served on a polystyrene tray,” chuckled Lettie. “Help yourself to beers, Riz,” she added, pointing to the rope that trailed over the side of the garden into the river and which was tied to a holey bucket full of bottles. Rizzo happily hauled up the bucket and passed another to Doug and Lettie at the same time. He sat on the grass supping his beer as the banter went back and forth. He answered, “yeah, OK,” to any questions about his last couple of days, not feeling ready to divulge the details of his latest challenges.

  Eventually, he picked up courage and nonchalantly asked, “Where’s Lisa?” picturing the events that would surely unfold throughout the evening. His ideal night after his trauma would be lying on the sofa in front of a film with dim lights and a bottle of Chablis. The door would open and Lisa would come in, rubbing her eyes sleepily. In her dozy state, she wouldn’t notice that she only had her satin nightie on, and she would sit on the sofa, snuggle back into him and they would watch the film together, his arm flopped over her waist, her hair soft against his chin…

  “She must still be with Malcolm,” said Lettie, stroking Alfie with a bare toe. “Perhaps she’s helping make cakes?”

  “Eh? Wha’?” started Rizzo, pulled from his dreams and turning over onto his stomach quickly.

  “She’s helped out a couple of times at the Sea View since Jill left. She’s gone back again today – even muttered something about doing the cakes. Although, having seen Lisa’s last Victoria Sandwich, I don’t think it’ll be a great improvement on Malcolm’s dry old biscuits!”

  “Making cakes? I thought she just wanted a bit of extra money, I didn’t think she wanted to make cakes? Can’t Malcolm make his own cakes?” gaped Rizzo, still feeling he was missing something. He wanted to interrogate, to run round and check, to make a couple of phone calls. But, despite his frustration, he could see that Lettie really wasn’t wanting to discuss it, and feeling that three was definitely a crowd, he slunk off to his room, propping the door open slightly so he could hear when Lisa came home.

  He wanted to declare his love to her, to hear her declare hers back. He needed to start his fresh start, turn over his new leaf, put on a clean sheet. He wanted to explain what he was about and for her to say that she would love him no matter what he did for a living. He really just wanted to feel her tits and go to sleep happy for a change.

  That night was the longest one that Rizzo had ever spent. He lay on his bed, straining to hear the f
ront door open. He heard mutterings and laughter from the garden that eventually transferred to the kitchen as the wind heightened and the evening turned grey. But, still no Lisa. What could she be doing? Perhaps she was in danger – should he go round and check? But, instead, he lay there; his conscience no longer bothered by the pile of books that sat on the shelf, destined for the second hand market – or maybe just the bin. The smells and happy sounds from the kitchen reminded him of the fun he wasn’t having and compounded his misery.

  Eventually he heard the noises of dishes being piled into the sink, the lights being turned off and Lettie and Doug walking quietly up the stairs. He heard them laughing as they brushed their teeth together and the door clicking open and shut as they each used the bathroom. He didn’t feel that he could face the sounds of them in the bedroom above him and therefore he went back downstairs, settling himself in front of the television to wait for his fantasy to become reality.

  Chapter 64

  Porked

  In the attic bedroom, Doug and Lettie were oblivious to the pain and suffering downstairs. They had giggled and chatted as they had reached the bedroom and then they had stopped. They had shared a dozen nights together by now, firstly in separate rooms, then together, neatly dressed in their purpose-bought nightwear. Slowly, slowly a couple of layers had come off.

  On that night they were both pleasantly satiated by the delicious food and wine that made them soft, but not sleepy. The night was warm and sticky as the clouds gathered. The bedroom skylight was wide open and the warm wind whipped through in gusts, occasionally refreshing the pair as they stood facing each other, wondering what the night would hold.