The Bluebird Café

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘Oh, this one’s good. Cheap prices. They have pistachios, peanuts, spices, everything. You give me a list if you like …’ he offered.

  ‘It sounds wonderful. But I don’t want to put you to any trouble. You don’t have a price list or anything, do you?’

  ‘You could get your rice and yoghurt there too. Why not come with me and see yourself?’ he said.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ Lucy said. ‘I mean, very useful for the café. Paul will be pleased.’

  ‘I’m going on Wednesday. How about four?’

  She walked back to the Bluebird with a can of Felix in each hand.

  ‘Paul,’ she said, ‘I’m going up to this really cheap, interesting Cash and Carry with the people from Vir’s. Cheap nuts, rice, loads of things. Isn’t that nice of them?’

  ‘Yeah. Did you get any samosas?’

  ‘Just catfood.’

  John Vir called for Lucy at exactly four o’clock. She had been about to walk round to the shop to see if he had remembered their arrangement, when suddenly he was there in the doorway. His van, a strange, dolphinish-green, was parked outside.

  ‘Oh God,’ she thought, ‘I can’t think of anything to say.’ She wished that she’d listed a few conversational topics on her cuff for easy reference. Then there she was, sliding on to the leatherette seat, belted in next to him, and his van was lumbering up The Avenue, the A33, towards the motorway. Lucy loved The Avenue, it was so impressively tree-lined and the views of Southampton Common were beautiful. She loved walking up it, driving up it, riding up it in a van. It made her think of Judy Garland dressed as a tramp with a smudge on her nose, a broken hat, and a blacked-out tooth. She could remember all the words. It had been her moment of glory as a Young Stager, singing ‘We’re a Couple of Swells’ with her friend Sally, before some blonde Miss Piggy ballet-type had danced to ‘Evergreen’.

  ‘What are you humming?’ asked John Vir.

  ‘Was I?’ Lucy had thought the song was just playing in her head. Now she was embarrassed. ‘Can we have the radio on?’

  He switched it on. It crackled. Lucy hated trying to tune in other people’s car radios. It was impossible. John Vir found Radio Solent.

  ‘And in Scene South today we have a special report on Southampton’s Fluoridation Debate.’

  ‘Oh, honestly,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Blah blah blah,’ said John. He twisted the dial and the van was filled with music and sunlight. It was ‘Natural Woman’. Lucy had to stare out the window in embarrassment. The light from the sun streamed through the clouds in golden shafts. As a child Lucy had thought that these were the ladders for dead people to go up to heaven, and for the angels to come down to earth. The road glistened ahead of them. John Vir pulled down his sun-shield, dazzled.

  ‘So what are you looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh God, well,’ said Lucy, thinking that he meant in life.

  ‘I get the same stuff every week. Customers just want the same. Crisps, nuts, spices, flour, oils.’

  They waltzed around the Cash and Carry together, loading their trolleys. When Lucy reached the checkout she realised that she was spending much more than she’d planned; but John Vir’s bill was five times the size of hers. She fumbled in her bag for more money, pulling out her salsa-stained chequebook with its embarrassing NatWest otters and weasels. John Vir pulled a wad of crisp twenties out of his back pocket. He had a little gilt money clip, and peeled off thirty notes.

  They loaded up the van. The space between the two rows of back seats was filled with boxes and sacks, on the top was a layer of packets of crisps, all the Monster Munch and Hula Hoops and Skips and everything that his customers would want in the next week.

  ‘Looks quite comfortable,’ joked Lucy, as they put the last few twelve-packs on top.

  He pictured them lying there. He had to stop himself from taking her and pushing her down on to that soft bed of packets. He was that close.

  Chapter 19

  John Vir unloaded her boxes from the back of the van and stacked them up in the doorway of the Bluebird.

  ‘I can bring them inside for you,’ he offered.

  ‘No, they’re fine here, but’ – she realised that he had never, ever been inside the café before – ‘if you’d like a cup of tea …’ then Paul appeared and began to carry the boxes inside.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘See you.’ John Vir turned and left.

  ‘Paul!’ she said, annoyed. ‘I was going to ask him, he might have wanted to come in. What’s that?’

  Somebody had shoved a note through the door.

  ‘I thought I might have heard someone. I was upstairs. There weren’t any customers, so I locked up … There might have been someone knocking.’

  ‘But you didn’t think to answer.’

  ‘Not really.’

  She unfolded the note, her face crumpled.

  ‘CAT UNDER PLANT IN FRONT GARDEN’.

  She was biting her lip. Fennel.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She handed him the note.

  ‘Stay here,’ said Paul, but of course they went together. Lucy thought, ‘This is my punishment,’ and then hated herself for thinking about John Vir and not Fennel. There was a bulkylooking Safeway’s bag poking out from under the morning glory.

  ‘I can’t look,’ thought Lucy, but of course she would have to. She had lost a cat before. She remembered the damp fur that had lost its shine, the beloved body gone stiff, paws frozen.

  Paul knelt and gently parted the tangle of fronds. Blue trumpets sounded a silent blast. There was a copy of the Next Directory inside the bag. A CATalogue.

  Lucy looked for something to order Fennel to show her how much she was loved, perhaps a navy blazer or a black jumper to lie on, some curtains to rip or an armchair to scratch.

  ‘What about a pair of tights to catch her claws in?’ Paul suggested.

  ‘An armchair or a sofa would be better. Up to £1,000 instant credit.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Chapter 20

  When Lucy lay in bed, trying to get to sleep, Gilbert’s voice would ring in her ears.

  ‘Would you like me to wipe down the tables, Lucy? It’s no trouble …’ and ‘Would you like me to fill up the salt pots, Lucy? It’s no trouble. I could do the pepper pots too …’ and ‘Would you like me to wipe down the counter for you, Lucy? It’s no trouble.’ It drove her crazy that he always used her name in such a ponderous way. She had also noticed, and it was a Southampton thing, that tables and counters were always wiped down, things fried up, or dusted off. In Southampton nothing was just plain done. Perhaps she had been here for too long.

  She would lie for what seemed like hours watching light beams from passing cars sweep around the ceiling. Paul usually seemed to be asleep, or to be doing a pretty good impression of someone being asleep. Sometimes she would whisper, ‘Paul – Paul – are you asleep?’ and sometimes when she did this he was instantly awake and would hold her. When he didn’t answer she would sometimes kiss him on the shoulder blade or place one of her hands on his thigh and beam him messages of love, or at least kind thoughts and good will.

  John Vir had decided to change his life. He usually did at around 11.30 on Sunday evenings, but this time he really meant it. He always really meant it, but this time he really did mean it. He was going to win Lucy. He would do whatever it took. She was going to be his. He thought of her soft hair, her sweet nose, her cool, slim hands, the way her collarbone jutted out when she shrugged, her feet in those floppy cotton shoes she always wore. What was it they called them? Escargots. Something like that. Perhaps he could get some at the Cash and Carry, and sell them in the shop. She might try them on. He could picture her slipping them on and off.

  Lucy was woken by Farming Today. She switched it off. She stared at the ceiling and made meticulous, itemised lists in her head. At 6.43 she got out of bed. At 7 a.m. Fennel was eating Arthur’s Meaty Chunks With Game. At 7.04 a cup of tea was placed beside Paul’s sleeping head, wher
e it could be discovered at 8.30 a.m. She had a bath and then cleaned the bathroom with special attention to the algae that had grown in the overflow of the basin. The clogged nozzle of Paul’s shaving foam was rinsed, the mirror was wiped, the flannels folded neatly, new soap was unwrapped, the towels were folded. Lucy could never decide whether flowers in the bathroom were naff or not, somehow akin to M&S peach-scented toiletries. The flat was hoovered, dusted, blitzed! The geraniums were dead-headed, the windowsills wiped. Would she have time to clean the windows? No! No! But she did wipe the milk shelf in the fridge. Paul emerged at 8.45, made toast, made crumbs, was banned from mucking up the bathroom and told to do the potatoes. They made moussaka and salad and took a café apple pie out of the freezer. The hideous, cheese-encrusted sandwich toaster was hidden at the back of a cupboard. Paul put on a pot of coffee. At 11.45, right on schedule and half an hour early, his parents arrived.

  ‘I’m sorry the place is in such a mess,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, dear,’ said Maggie Cloud. ‘We don’t expect you to go to any trouble.’

  They were sitting down to lunch. Whatever she did, whatever she and Paul cooked, or even if they were abroad or in a restaurant, Paul’s family always spent these special or family celebration meals discussing other meals they had eaten.

  ‘Remember those king prawns we had in Portugal …’

  ‘At that little place with the farm implements on the ceiling …’

  ‘And those stuffed trotters at that one with the double loos …’

  ‘And where the waiter showed you your fish before it was cooked …’

  ‘And remember when we had that wonderful chicken with lime …’

  ‘It was lemon grass.’

  ‘Oh yes, in that French-Thai place where they gave us those awful soggy sesame crackers …’

  ‘And we weren’t sure if she’d spilled something on them without realising it.’

  ‘I think they’d stayed out in the sun too long – or we had – ha ha ha!’

  It was a litany. Lucy had to dig her nails into her palms under the table. If she’d been at Malory Towers she’d have been stuffing her clean hanky into her mouth.

  ‘Oh God, and when we went to America – the amount they eat is disgusting!’ Paul’s mother would say as she helped herself to a little more potato salad. ‘At breakfast I’d say, “But I just want eggs on toast with a little bacon and tomato.” But they’d insist on bringing you this huge platter! And the cakes! The amount they eat is disgusting. They’d have a whole sponge cake to themselves. No wonder they are so obese as a nation.’

  ‘Remember those steaks they gave us at that little taverna above Firenze? They just show them the flame!’

  ‘Oh, and that asparagus there, and that bread!’

  ‘Remember those watermelon ice creams we had in Geneva …’ And they were off again. They had eaten the whole of Europe.

  The first time Lucy met the Clouds, she thought, My God. Perhaps I have completely the wrong idea about him. Paul became subtly different; but she got used to it, and saw the ways in which he was a different sort of Cloud and had detached himself from his parents. He managed not to carry a thermos of coffee on all car journeys or clean his shoes every Sunday night. He recklessly patted strange cats.

  After lunch, Paul’s parents visited Vir and Vir to stock up on spices, curry paste and cheap peppercorns.

  ‘So much cheaper than Salisbury’s,’ said Maggie. Her real name was Magnolia.

  ‘Why on earth doesn’t she insist on Magnolia?’ Lucy wondered as she peeled off her Marigolds. She’d just done all of the clearing up by herself, having decided to give the family outing to Vir and Vir a miss.

  ‘I do go there every day,’ she told them.

  The Clouds bought themselves a large sack of meat samosas and heated them up under the grill while Lucy dried the last of the lunch things. Then they all drove to the New Forest to visit a deer sanctuary.

  ‘I’m thinking of joining a contemplative order,’ Lucy told Paul as they queued to get on to the wooden deer-viewing platform.

  ‘Me too,’ said Paul.

  ‘Oh, look! There’s a whole flock of them over there!’ cried Maggie Cloud.

  ‘Not a flock, a herd!’ James corrected her. He had a keen interest in collective nouns. Everyone ignored him, including the deer who were sleeping in the sun or audibly grazing, oblivious to the fact that every middle-class child in Hampshire had come to visit them.

  On the way home they stopped in Lyndhurst so that James could buy a tub of New Forest Venison Pâté. Lucy bought a postcard of some dreary New Forest ponies standing around looking cold.

  When at last they left, Maggie squeezed Lucy’s hand and said, ‘It’s so lovely to have you coming into the family.’

  Lucy nearly said: ‘WHAT?’ but instead she said: ‘Oh, thank you,’ and kissed Maggie on the cheek. When they’d gone she asked Paul what ‘coming into the family’ might mean.

  ‘She must be expecting us to get married,’ he said. ‘She asked me if we were thinking about it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I said we might think about it.’

  ‘Might we?’

  ‘Oh, Lucy, you know I’d like to marry you.’

  She said nothing. Paul opened a can of lager.

  ‘Give us a swig,’ said Lucy. ‘There wouldn’t be meat on the menu at the reception.’

  ‘Reception?’

  And then the phone rang.

  A ‘thank you for a nice day’ present from Maggie Cloud arrived in the post. It was a special roly thing for massaging tired feet. It looked like a medieval torture implement, and was made of wood from sustainable forests. Lucy was pleased with it, but Paul said, ‘Things like this don’t need to exist. There should be special licences that people have to obtain before they can go making any more crap. There’s too much stuff in the world already. People shouldn’t be able to manufacture something unless they can prove that it is really necessary, that it will add to the sum of global happiness and well-being.’

  There was no more talk of weddings for quite some time.

  That night, in the privacy of their own bed, back home in Sussex, Maggie Cloud said: ‘I really do like Lucy, but I must say that for someone who runs a restaurant, or would you call it a café, or a bistro, she doesn’t seem very interested in food.’

  ‘They call it a café,’ her husband told her.

  Chapter 21

  The Bluebird Café was the only shop in the street that lacked a security grille. John Vir was raising his, but Lucy and Paul were asleep and didn’t hear. It had been a heavy night. The Bluebird had been full. A party of women with eating disorders had booked for five but turned up with twelve. The debut of Lucy’s pecan pie had been a great success. As the last compulsive eater had cycled whistling into the night, Paul and Lucy had melted like toffee into each other’s arms. They had made a profit, and consequently the Bluebird wasn’t going to open until at least noon the next day.

  John Vir wondered where his brother had got to. He hadn’t seen him for weeks. Two paper boys were approaching. He was thankful that so few of the locals wanted their papers delivered. He paid a generous weekly wage, but it was getting increasingly difficult to find willing children. He sometimes had to deliver the papers himself. His kids would never have agreed to get up so early, or to be seen dead doing something like that. Now he knew how the grey cotton straps dug into the paper boys’ shoulders, and how those huge fluorescent bags thudded on to their thighs with every step.

  The large orange notice asking for paper boys or girls or even (this desperate) active pensioners brought few enquiries. He wondered if any of the other posters and flyers that he agreed to display in the window, advertising things like Green Party meetings, jumble sales, Crèche Workers Wanted For Punjabi Women’s Group, Islamic Students’ Day of Prayer, had any more luck.

  John Vir’s spirits plummeted whenever he found a left-behind shopping list on the counter or the floor, o
r in a basket. He’d hated lists ever since his wife had left him and he’d found the one she’d made. On one side was:

  underwear

  slipper

  housecoat

  brush

  passport

  cloths

  maked up

  money

  nail files

  On the other side were two columns, For and Against. He had seen that Against was against staying with him. There was also a name, Raj, and a phone number. Who was Raj? They knew lots of Rajes. He saw that the number wasn’t local. He dialled it.

  ‘Good morning! You’re through to This Morning and Dr Raj Persaud. Please hold. Your call is being held in a queuing system and one of our operators will talk to you soon.’ But an operator didn’t. It was the afternoon and the show was over. The line went dead. As he listened to the monotone of nothing he studied her lists. For and Against.

  For

  Against

  Quite tall

  Dirty feet

  Opens pickle jars

  Doesn’t take notice

  Doesn’t help with kids

  No ambition

  Lazy

  Won’t wash van

  Not romantic

  Not firm

  Gives tic

  His heart had broken, not just because she had left him, but because she had decided to do so on a daytime TV phone-in, probably in front of five million viewers, while he was downstairs in the shop bundling up the News from yesterday.

  Chapter 22

  When Lucy put plates in front of customers she stared at their hands. She had realised that you could tell how old people were by their hands, the elasticity of the skin, the wrinkliness, the faded or yellowed nails. She was keeping an eye on her own and thought that she could detect the first signs of decay, a certain greyness about the knuckles, a shininess of the skin over the third phalange. She was so busy spying on her hands that she failed to notice a rearguard action. And then one day, trying on some trousers and checking that her bum didn’t look big, she saw that there were somebody else’s elbows attached to her arms. She was turning into her old RE teacher, Miss Dowling, starting with the elbows. She wondered if there was a diet to save elbows, or the backs of knees, which also worried her. She thought that she might have some invisible varicose veins. She wouldn’t talk to Paul about it. She didn’t want to tarnish the image he had of her. She remembered reading somewhere that you should sit with your elbows in lemon halves for half an hour every week. She could attach the lemons with Sellotape and carry on cooking. She decided to write a book, How to Firm Your Elbows and Rid Yourself of Invisible Varicose Veins. Daytime TV beckoned. She was expounding it to Abigail, but Abigail wasn’t listening. She was staring out of the café window.