The Bluebird Café

by Rebecca Smith

  What Lucy really wanted that night was someone with £20,000 a year and very many acres in Derbyshire; but she thought that she couldn’t tell Paul that.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Paul.

  ‘Camomile, please.’

  Lucy drank the camomile tea. It usually made her sleepy. Paul was already asleep and looking at home in the world. Lucy thought about her life. Somehow she had expected exciting things to happen. She didn’t know what she wanted to do now, let alone for the rest of her life. Abigail and Teague would always be happy digging. Paul would just consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air and be content. She thought about her ex-friend Sara whose name she saw every Saturday in the Independent. Sara would definitely be happy. Lucy hadn’t kept in touch with all of her friends from school or university, but she knew what most of them were doing, and it was impressive. They were all doing something; travelling, being doctors, working in TV, making lots of money. Not running a café for losers. She bet that Sara’s hands didn’t smell of tinned tomatoes or onions. Lucy sniffed her hands again. It made her feel sick. An odd sickness like a lump at the top of her stomach. She sat up and that made her feel even sicker.

  Chapter 39

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask then?’ said Mavis, flicking her ash into the crinkly paper case of the last Fondant Fancy.

  ‘Ask what?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘What happened to the others!’

  ‘I just saw you eat them, didn’t I?’

  ‘Not the Fancies, you daft bugger. My husbands!’ Mavis shouted, playfully punching him in the arm. ‘Everybody asks sooner or later.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me, Mavis.’ Gilbert said kindly. ‘I don’t mind about your past.’ Gilbert hadn’t really thought about Mavis’s past, but now that he did, he thought that he didn’t really want to know.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘I met me first husband, that was Les, when I was just ten. He was from a big family that moved into our street. Everyone knew the Diapers.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gilbert, confused by the name.

  ‘Les Diaper knocked me up when I was sixteen. My mum talked to his mum. They settled it all and we was going to get married. But I wasn’t, after all, and then seeing as I had the dress and everything we got married anyway. He worked on the ships. He was killed cleaning inside of that tanker. The Endeavour. That was the biggest one ever in Southampton.’

  ‘I remember it, that ship,’ said Gilbert. It had taken up the whole horizon. It was so big that people hardly believed it could move, but eventually it did, sliding out of Southampton Water to in-depth coverage on South Today and a double-page spread in the News.

  ‘He was cleaning it. They had to go inside where there wasn’t light and scrub with these chemicals. He fell eighty-five feet.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, he died, didn’t he, stupid.’ Mavis was annoyed now. ‘They said it was his own fault cos he was eating a Marathon. They weren’t meant to eat on the job. Even tried to say he choked to death. Eighty-five feet and they said that!’ Gilbert patted her shoulder to try and calm her down. Her face was getting redder and she was scratching her arms harder and harder making a rasping sound, long thick nails across skin that was hairy, leathery and shiny.

  ‘I met my next husband – that was Wilf – at the funeral. Wilf had been on the same platform with Les when it happened. He saw everything and he said that you couldn’t see much as it was black in there.’ She paused to light another cigarette. It calmed her. ‘I’ll show you some photos sometime.’

  ‘You’ve got photos?’ asked Gilbert, incredulous. ‘Of that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of him dead in the ship?’

  ‘Whaddya think I am? Who’d have photos of that… Would you want to see’m? You a pervert?’

  ‘No!’ cried Gilbert, helpless. ‘I didn’t understand, I thought you meant…’ His voice trailed off again. Perhaps he’d blown it with Mavis now. He didn’t want to see photos of her dead husband, or even husbands.

  ‘Oh, come here, you,’ said Mavis, all forgiving. ‘You’re just daft.’

  Gilbert’s eyes were brim-full as he buried his head in the soft pillows of her chest.

  Three days passed before Gilbert thought to ask: ‘But what happened to Wilf then?’

  ‘Heart,’ said Mavis. ‘Out of the blue. He looked fit as a fiddle but he just dropped down dead in the bookie’s.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Mavis,’ said Gilbert, and he took her hand.

  ‘So was I. He told me he’d given it up. I didn’t believe them when they phoned me up. “It’s a Case of Mistaken Identity,” I told them, but they came round and got me to identify him. I was livid. He had dockets for £25 in his pocket and the manager said that there might be others I could get back, but I’d of had to fill out the forms, and seeing as I didn’t know what he’d put on, I couldn’t, could I?’

  Mavis blew a fat smoke ring. It drifted towards Gilbert, the ghost of a wreath.

  ‘And they’re bloody miles from each other!’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Wilf and Les. In the Garden of Remembrance. It takes me fifteen minutes to get from Les to Wilf, and sometimes I forget to say something and I have to go back, then back again. You can come with me next time I go, if the weather cheers up.’

  ‘OK,’ said Gilbert, but he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to go.

  ‘Don’t look like that!’ Mavis gave him a hearty nudge. ‘We can make a day of it with sandwiches and a picnic.’

  The number 13 bus trailed through the Flower Estate. There weren’t that many flowers, but wrecked cars, Union Jacks, rotary dryers and whole Argos catalogues of toys had sprouted in the gardens. In Begonia Road the soil was heavy clay. There were a few brave-hearted begonias and busy lizzies. Autumn would bring garden mums. Every few yards the bus stopped so that huge girls with strong bare legs and pushchairs could clomp on. Pensioners heaved themselves aboard. Dusty felt hats, scarves, macs, trolleys, cracked purses with bus-pass pockets; they had everything necessary for a trip to the shops in the kind summer sunshine.

  ‘All right, love?’

  ‘Not so bad. Yourself?’

  The bus drivers called them Twirlies because their passes became valid at 9.30 in the morning and they were always asking: ‘Am I too early?’ A driver had been disciplined, and disgraced in the News, for setting his watch ten minutes slow.

  The bus lurched around a sharp bend and plummeted downhill past Daisy Dip where there were grass and swings and trees and things to ride.

  ‘That’s where they want to build the new houses,’ an ancient in a purple tea cosy told her headscarfed companion.

  ‘No!’

  ‘It is. Housing association. You know what that means.’

  Her friend didn’t, but nodded sagely.

  ‘Pakis and more kids.’

  ‘They can’t do that to Daisy Dip!’ But they could, and would.

  Gilbert fingered the change in his pocket and looked at Mavis holding the picnic bag, clamping the handles together lest any goodies should tumble out or get nicked. It was only 9.55. Gilbert wondered how long they’d wait for the sandwiches. He guessed that they’d visit the graves first. He hoped that Mavis wouldn’t get upset. He’d hate it if she cried.

  Mavis had brought a bottle of Kleenezee Spic’n’Span, all-purpose Polish’n’Kleen and some Happy Shopper J-cloths for the headstones and the flowers. Gilbert had a pack of cards in his pocket. He was looking out of the window, he hadn’t been this far north in Southampton for a long time. The houses got further apart, they were off the Flower Estate now, just a few miles from the village where he’d grown up.

  ‘Come on!’ Mavis shoved him and his shoulder banged against the window. It would have hurt but for the thick padding of Wilf’s tartan jacket with its big furry collar. The zip was broken but it still had plenty of wear left in it. Silly not t
o accept it. So Wilf’s jacket was visiting Wilf’s grave. Gilbert hoped that Wilf wouldn’t mind. He had felt a bit awkward wearing it there, but Mavis had said that his council coat was disrespectful.

  They swung down the aisle and off the bus. As it pulled away Gilbert realised that he’d left his return ticket tucked into the metal trim of the seat in front of theirs. Oh well, too late. He dreaded telling Mavis.

  Mavis didn’t cry. She worked hard with the Spic’n’Span, and the graves and flowers were soon sparkling.

  ‘Wilf, this is Gilbert Runnic,’ she said. ‘Say hello then, Gilbert.’ She gave him a subtle kick in the ankle to prompt him.

  ‘Hello, Wilf,’ he mumbled.

  ‘He’s with me now, Wilf. We might get married. I know you won’t mind.’

  ‘Us? Get married?’ Gilbert’s mouth fell open.

  ‘Why not? We love each other, don’t we?’ She hurled herself towards him, intending to fall into his arms, and for a moment they stumbled, and Gilbert thought that they were going to collapse on to Wilf’s plot.

  ‘We’ll do it properly, mind. I’m gonna ask Cllr Doon to be my back-up.’

  ‘Back-up? What for? If you don’t show up?’ Gilbert hadn’t even said ‘Yes’ yet, and he was in danger of ending up with Cllr Doon if Mavis dipped out at the last minute. She might too. He had no idea what this crazy woman might do next.

  ‘Witnesser, I mean. To sign with us.’

  ‘Oh. I haven’t ever been to a wedding yet … Could I ask Paul and Lucy?’

  ‘Everyone loves a wedding. Come on, let’s celebrate. Where’s that thermos?’ She grabbed the bag and unzipped its side pocket, it grinned back at her with white plastic teeth. ‘Here. I brought these to sit on.’ Out came two neatly folded plastic carriers. Gilbert’s said ‘I’m A Happy Shopper’, Mavis just had a Lloyd’s Chemist one. They unpacked the picnic and got comfy, leaning against the mossy old stone behind them, where six feet under was Lily Runnic (1925–1965), resting in peace.

  Chapter 40

  Smells. Lucy was surrounded by them, overcome by them. She hadn’t realised before what a smelly place Southampton was. Ugh. The smell of the fake-fur collar on the tartan jacket that Gilbert had taken to wearing. Grease-clogged nylon. A man came into the café and Lucy knew that he’d had a boiled egg with Marmite soldiers and a drink of milk for breakfast. The smell of a customer’s dirty hair. The smell of dirty tea towels. The smell of the mice and the Badger Centre. She could tell that Paul had cleaned out the newts that afternoon.

  ‘Paul. The smell of newts, or even worse, tadpoles, is the worst smell in the world,’ she told him, but he was making himself a peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwich and she had to leave the room before he could reply. She pulled the neck of her sweatshirt up over her nose and breathed through that. She wished that Abigail was there to do the frying. She bought some cologne tissues at the chemist so that she could carry one balled-up in her hand and sniff it when necessary. If this carried on, she decided, they’d definitely have to quit the Bluebird, or serve nothing but very, very weak peppermint tea, melon, and lavender sorbet.

  It must be a cook’s ennui, Lucy decided. A special nausea that a person would get if they’d cooked too many hot dinners. Then she noticed that her feet had a new splayed look, as though something had been dropped on them, or a cartoon steamroller had rolled over them. They were flatter and looser.

  Paul, even Paul, noticed that she looked tired. She had huge panda circles around her eyes. Her wrists ached. Her lips were chapped. The words were in her mouth.

  ‘Paul. I think I might be pregnant.’ She didn’t say them because she couldn’t believe it might be true, and didn’t know what she would feel, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she might be VERY PLEASED. She decided to do a test and then tell Paul if it was Yes, and perhaps if it was No.

  The Boots Home Pregnancy Test Kit, £7.95, was in her bag – bulging, she joked to herself, a surely unmistakable bulge – when they looked around Bluebell Cottage.

  ‘Lots of plants are original,’ Paul told her. ‘Nineteen twenties. The bulbs have naturalised. I saw it last spring, all blues and yellows, scilla, real daffodils, and bluebells of course.’ The gardens were surrounded by a thick hawthorn hedge and a ditch. There were front and back gates with little bridges.

  ‘Ha ha – a ditch!’ said Lucy. ‘I’d have to make that joke to myself every time I went out. I wonder if it will flood.’

  ‘No, silly. Too high up,’ said Paul.

  ‘Oh. I never really think of Southampton as having hills.’

  ‘There would have been deer here once,’ Paul said. ‘There’s a badger sett not far off too. We could go and watch at night.’

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Lucy. It was an unusual tree. ‘Is it native?’

  ‘It’s a wychelm.’

  ‘Oh, Paul! Really?’

  She looked for pig’s teeth. There weren’t any, but even better, there was a walnut tree with a swing.

  ‘We could put a hammock up too,’ said Paul, ‘and get some more deckchairs.’

  ‘I’ll make pickled walnuts. We’ll be self-sufficient in them. Let’s go inside.’ There was a black iron boot scraper and a bell pull.

  ‘Mr Badger, I presume,’ said Lucy.

  ‘What?’

  There was a porch with shelves for geraniums and a place for Wellingtons and spiders. The door was heavy. There was a brass knocker, a woodpecker. A pokerwork sign said ‘Bluebell Cottage’.

  ‘Do you think that’s naff?’ she asked Paul.

  ‘Sort of, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Abigail,’ Paul replied.

  ‘Well, I hardly think that someone in love with someone who wears sports sandals can be the arbiter of good taste.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Paul unlocked the door with a very ordinary Yale key. Inside everything seemed pale yellow. It made Lucy think of retsina, or a yellowish Chardonnay. All of the woodwork was painted yellow. The floors were all bare boards and had once been polished; they would be again.

  ‘There is gas,’ said Paul, ‘but it has to be serviced, and probably all replaced, but that’s a landlord’s legal duty. It comes unfurnished. Apart from this–’ he tapped a hatstand ‘– and there’s a table in the kitchen.’

  ‘Could we have real fires?’

  ‘Once the chimneys have been swept. Wouldn’t you mind living on the Common? You couldn’t go anywhere on your own after dusk.’

  ‘Where is there to go? I never go anywhere anyway. And it’s only a few yards from a road.’

  ‘Cemetery Road.’

  ‘Well, that’s a gay pick-up place so I’d be all right. We could always move again if it was too spooky or something …’

  ‘What about your café?’ Paul asked her. ‘You know I can still do the job without taking over the cottage. They’d be paying me more too.’

  ‘Oh, let’s forget the café, ditch the café. There’s only two more months to go on the lease anyway. Now’s a good time to quit. Quit while you’re breaking even, isn’t that what they say? And something might happen. I might do more for the News or get another job or something. The cafe’s no fun now that Abi’s gone.’

  ‘You’ll miss her, won’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t got anyone to be friends with now.’

  Lucy didn’t know that there was a whole new raft of friends waiting for her a few months away. Friends to go to Aquanatal with, to float beside, their arms entwined in buoyant, bendy, pastel-coloured poles, friends who would keep each other afloat, who would pass around bootleg copies of a recently published study on Squash-Drinking Syndrome in Under-Fives, friends to meet by the duck pond, all carrying unnecessarily huge changing bags and endless supplies of bread-sticks and baby wipes, friends who would tell each other they were looking really slim (or really tired, cream-crackered, saying ‘Have you had an awful night?’). Friends who all carried spotless white muslin squares from John Lewis. Lucy would want to send Paul out to buy some. She hadn’t known how indispensable they w
ere.

  Pretty dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight that were sliding through the sitting-room windows.

  ‘I used to think that they were bits of gravity,’ said Lucy, ‘and that the sun’s rays were ladders for angels. It’s really warm. I was expecting it to be cold, and you said damp.’

  The kitchen seemed cold though.

  ‘We can paint it, and once we’ve got the oven on … and it might be sunny in here in the mornings.’

  There was a proper larder with marble shelves and a pointed wooden door. The cracked grey lino ran out a foot short of the back of the larder, revealing dusty red tiles.

  ‘Quarry tiles! We can be on Home Front!’

  Upstairs was a bathroom with a huge enamel bath full of spider webs, and a sink with coppery trails under the taps. The loo had a hateful brown plastic seat.

  ‘We’ll change the seat and bleach everything. It’ll be fine,’ said Lucy.

  ‘There isn’t a shower.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  There were two bedrooms, one was really tiny.

  ‘There wouldn’t be much space for people to come and stay,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Good.’

  The smell of emptiness and some dead flies on the windowsill made Lucy feel sick again. She opened the window and breathed in great draughts of the sweet woody air. They could see a section of one of the paths that circled the lake. Birds were singing. A pair of dog walkers strolled past, swinging their leads, dogs nowhere, then came a boy on a bike, then a jogger.

  ‘I think it’s quite busy here actually,’ said Lucy.

  Chapter 41

  Paul and Lucy locked up Bluebell Cottage and set off back across the Common towards the café.

  ‘I do love it, Paul. I mean, I would love to live there. I’m sick of the mean streets of Southampton. It’s so dirty around the café. I know every crack in those dirty sidewalks … Really, we should think of moving right out into the Forest, or the real countryside.’ Lucy had never been quite convinced by the New Forest’s claims to be an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was too accessible and reminded her of childhood walks across some of Surrey’s finest golf courses. You always seemed to be within a Hawkshead catalogue’s throw of a Renault Espace. ‘Would you like that, Paul?’ she asked. He looked surprised.