Vinegar Soup

by Miles Gibson

  She held the scrap of paper to the light and squinted at the scrawled message. My name is Frank. That was it. My name is Frank.

  She shuffled back to the table and squatted down beside the shopping basket.

  ‘Gilbert!’ she whispered as Frank laughed and clapped his hands.

  ‘Gilbert!’ she shouted as Frank kicked and blew a string of bubbles.

  Gilbert came out of the kitchen. He was wearing a rubber apron and carried a butcher’s knife in his fist. ‘What’s wrong?’ he grumbled as he sliced impatiently at the air with his knife. He was chopping chickens.

  ‘I’ve found a baby.’

  ‘What sort of baby?’

  ‘He’s called Frank,’ said Olive softly as she tickled Frank’s chin.

  Gilbert hooked the knife into his apron and came crashing among the tables, blowing steam and muttering darkly to himself. But when he reached Olive and saw the shopping basket he was so surprised that he couldn’t speak. He stood and scratched his head.

  ‘It’s a baby,’ explained Olive.

  ‘Is it dead?’ he whispered.

  ‘No.’

  Gilbert picked up the shopping basket and placed it gently on the table. He peered at Frank and frowned. He sniffed. He closed one eye. He studied Frank like a man weighs a cheese.

  ‘Perhaps we should find him something to eat,’ he said at last.

  ‘We can’t keep him,’ whispered Olive. Her face flushed. Her eyes sparkled with excitement.

  ‘Why? We could turn one of the bedrooms into a nursery. I could build him a little bed and make him comfortable,’ argued Gilbert. He looked around the cafe at the rows of empty tables and chairs. The monotonous rain of a dark, February evening washed the windows. He didn’t want the child but he didn’t want Olive to think he couldn’t manage a family. He was ready for anything.

  ‘But he already belongs to someone,’ complained Olive and then, as if she feared he might be snatched away at any moment, she scooped the child from the nest and held him tightly in her arms. Frank rolled his head and bubbled peacefully.

  Gilbert’s face, pale and full as a moon, grew dark for a moment and shone again. ‘They know where to find him if they want him,’ he grunted. ‘I mean, they left him here.’ They were always leaving something behind them. Gloves, overcoats, books, newspapers, bundles of laundry, bunches of keys. He’d once found a dead pigeon wrapped in a woman’s head scarf. It was a strange neighbourhood.

  ‘But there are laws against it,’ said Olive.

  ‘What laws?’ demanded Gilbert scornfully.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. There are laws about everything. You know that.’

  ‘But he was a gift. Whoever left him here meant us to look after him. That’s obvious. And there’s no law that says you can’t accept a gift,’ declared Gilbert. He found the feeding bottle and birth certificate.

  ‘But we don’t know anything about babies,’ murmured Olive.

  She glanced at Gilbert and blushed. They had worked and lived together since the death of her father and thought of themselves as man and wife. Gilbert Firestone was ten years older than Olive. But the difference in their ages was not important. Olive could not have cared tuppence if Gilbert had been eighty. Perhaps she might have preferred it. Old men have poor eyes and like to sleep in their vests. Olive thought nudity unhygienic and received Gilbert’s more intimate gestures of affection with a mixture of ridicule and disgust. She loved children but she hated the thought of having to grow them. She couldn’t explain it but she knew they would catch in her pipes and tubes. Frank appearing under the table was her idea of the perfect delivery.

  ‘We can learn,’ snorted Gilbert impatiently. ‘You see people every day who can hardly manage a knife and fork but they have children. Dozens of them.’

  Olive was silent. A woman has instincts. A woman only has to follow her instincts. It couldn’t be difficult. You didn’t need an education to wash and feed a child. It was all part of the natural order. And he looked so helpless caught up in her arms with his belly puffed out and his little legs swinging.

  ‘Do you think he looks queer?’ she said.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Gilbert, leaning forward and giving Frank another sniff.

  ‘Well, perhaps he’s soft in the head and that’s why they left him.’

  Frank looked at Gilbert and bared his gums in a grin.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ said Gilbert. ‘Count his fingers.’

  ‘I suppose we could keep him until they come back for him. We could give him something to eat and make him a bed for the night…’

  ‘There’s no harm in it,’ said Gilbert. He was hot beneath the rubber apron and there were chickens to be chopped. With so many mouths to feed another mouth would make no difference. And what did babies eat? Milk mostly. Stewed fruit. Slops. Dogs eat more.

  ‘Perhaps they’ll come and collect him tomorrow,’ said Olive.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert. ‘We’ll wait until tomorrow.’ And that was how Frank came to live at the Hercules Cafe.

  Olive found him and Gilbert took a shine to him. On that first night he slept in his basket at the foot of their bed. They never planned to keep him. But the days passed and no one came to take him away.

  3

  Eggs fried in bacon fat and slapped, dripping, between limp leaves of damp, white bread. Sausages, pink as penises, rolling in frying pans glazed with butter. Meat pies, big as bricks, oozing hot and fragrant slurry. Potatoes, baked in their skins and split, like wizen leather skulls, to let their ghosts escape in steam. Hamburgers. Frankfurters. Canned mushrooms slippery as rabbits’ eyes. Blocks of cheese the size of headstones. The smell! And the noise! The clank of toasters, the chatter of plates, soup hissing, buckets banging, forks scratching, spoons spinning, chairs screeching, tables groaning and, above everything, the noise of the grinding, slurping, belching, farting customers of the Hercules Cafe.

  It was an old establishment, a dirty brick building on a narrow street of small Victorian sweatshops. The Imperial Button Company, on the corner of the street, had once made glass beads and shaved elephant tusks into waistcoat trimmings. A good set of tusks made five hundred bags of Imperial buttons, plain or fancy. They were sold, by the thousand, in Piccadilly, while far away on the African coast a bag of buttons was all you paid for another slaughtered elephant. When the elephants were gone the button company collapsed. Now it was a grocery owned by a Greek with gold in his teeth. He sold bread, milk, soap and cheese.

  The Sambo Rubber Works on the opposite side of the street had made breathing corsets for nursing mothers. The rubber was spun into soft, pink strands and knitted into the shape of women. But between the wars a machine caught fire and the little business melted down. Now the building contained a peculiar smell and a failing beauty parlour.

  Next door, the Excellent Boot Company had changed hands a dozen times and was at present doing rather badly as a shop selling second-hand furniture. The Monkey Polish Company was a barber’s shop. The Bluebird Engravers was a hole in the wall that sold cigarettes and pornographic magazines. Everything changes. But the Hercules Cafe had always been the Hercules Cafe. The original sign still clung to the brickwork, the heavy wooden letters bleached by the sun and painted every year by Gilbert who, dreaming of yards of fizzling neon, revived the name with vigorous coats of red and green and gold. Gilbert was hungry for colour. One year he painted the tables blue and the next year he painted the chairs yellow. But it made no difference. Behind the sweating windows, a hundred years of cooking had stained the cafe relentless shades of gravy and smoke.

  At one end of the long dining room a metal counter guarded the door to the kitchen. Olive lurked behind the counter. Gilbert worked in the kitchen. He grilled, fried, baked, boiled, poached, roasted and toasted with the energy of a demon. He was ready to cook anything that fell into his hands. He was afraid of nothing. He would have skinned and stewed a crocodile if he had found one crawling among the potatoes in the larder and,
indeed, had eaten crocodile in his travels and kept the recipe in his diary. Everything that moved between heaven and hell was in danger from his knife and his frying pan.

  Olive carried the food he cooked without question or complaint. She might have been serving portions of mud cake. She ran between the tables with her arms loaded with dishes, scribbling orders, collecting empties and wiping up spills with a big, grey cloth. Food had lost its meaning. Some of it was hot and some of it was cold. But all of it was heavy. And where was Frank? He was growing under the counter. Gilbert built him a little chair and he sat there each morning, sucking his thumb and staring up into Olive’s skirt. He liked to be under her feet despite the food that she spilled on his head. He liked the rustle of her legs and the hot gusts of smoke that followed her from the kitchen. In the afternoons she would wash his hair and take him upstairs to bed. She read him nursery rhymes and sang him songs. But Gilbert paid him no attention until the boy learned to talk.

  ‘Eat your greens,’ said Gilbert one evening as they sat around the kitchen table for a late chicken supper. He tapped Frank on the head with his fork.

  ‘No,’ said Frank. He was three years old. A small boy with large ears and eyes the colour of rust flakes.

  ‘They’re good for you,’ said Olive to encourage him.

  ‘I don’t want them,’ scowled Frank, who was having trouble with his spoon.

  ‘I’ll eat them,’ said Gilbert. He flicked his fork into Frank’s bowl and carried off a mouthful of cabbage. Frank couldn’t believe it. He was horrified. He had no use for the greens but he hadn’t expected anyone to steal from his bowl. He stared at Gilbert and his mouth fell open. He leaked potato over his chin.

  ‘You shouldn’t steal food from children,’ scolded Olive. ‘It makes them nervous.’

  Gilbert pretended to look ashamed. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,’ he whispered at Frank.

  Frank waved his spoon and frowned thoughtfully at Gilbert. ‘You wouldn’t eat a horse!’ he chuckled. He loaded his spoon with more potato, aimed for his mouth, missed the target and plugged his nose.

  ‘Certainly,’ nodded Gilbert.

  ‘Don’t tease him,’ said Olive, drilling Frank’s nostrils with the corner of a handkerchief.

  ‘Horses, goats, monkeys, cats, dogs, I’ll eat anything,’ declared Gilbert and he bared his teeth in a hungry smile.

  A few days later Frank went missing from his chair under the counter. He crawled out among the tables, collecting cmmbs and coffee stains, until he reached the far corner of the cafe. There, sitting against the window he found a big, red man feeding a mongrel scraps of fried egg.

  For a few minutes Frank sat and stared in delight at the dog. The man had laid his plate on the floor and the dog was licking at the greasy puddle. It was an old dog with sad eyes and a stiff, white beard. When it saw Frank its tail began to work, brushing crumbs around the floor.

  ‘Is that your dog?’ said Frank, pulling at the big man’s leg. The man peered between his knees and grinned at Frank.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. His breath smelt of fried eggs, tea and tobacco.

  ‘What’s his name?’ said Frank.

  ‘Betty,’ said the man. The dog stopped brushing crumbs, cocked its head and glanced suspiciously at its master.

  ‘Can I have him?’ asked Frank.

  ‘You’re too small for a dog.’

  ‘I want to give him to Gilbert,’ said Frank.

  ‘Why?’ said the man.

  ‘He eats them,’ explained Frank.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ the man roared at his neighbours. ‘The kid says that Gilbert eats dogs. He probably puts ’em in the pies!’

  No one looked surprised.

  ‘They’ll never put you in a pie. There’s no meat on you,’ laughed the man, staring down at the dwarf in the long vest and big knitted hat. He was a strange kid. Something looked wrong with him. Perhaps he was queer in the head.

  Olive dressed Frank from the local street market and he sported an alarming collection of coats, vests and knitted hats. Everything was too big for him, his hats slipped over his ears and his sleeves trailed to his knees, but Olive didn’t seem to notice. She chose clothes for their warmth and endurance.

  ‘He’ll grow into them,’ she explained to Gilbert when he complained that Frank resembled a scarecrow.

  When Frank began to walk she bought him a pair of shoes that were so big they fell off his feet when he tried to lift them from the ground. Olive stuffed them with newspapers.

  ‘They’ll last him for years,’ she announced proudly as they watched Frank stamp across the room. Gilbert wasn’t convinced but Olive refused to argue with him. And so Frank wandered about the cafe with his ears pushed under a knitted hat and his feet as long as funeral barges.

  While Frank was growing into clothes Olive was growing out of them. She stitched her skirts and darned her drawers as if she were determined to make them last a lifetime.

  ‘They’ll see me out,’ she would say when Gilbert grumbled about her threadbare aprons or the holes in her shirts. She hated waste. She wore her clothes until they fell apart.

  Once Frank had learned to walk he soon taught himself to climb. Then he refused to stay in his nest at night, climbed over their bed and tried to settle in Olive’s arms. Gilbert grew unexpectedly jealous. He watched Frank wriggle into the warmth between Olive’s fat, forbidden thighs and it nearly drove him mad with frustration. He knew she loved him less than the child. He felt old and foolish and lonely. One morning he woke to find that Frank had lost his way in the dark and fallen asleep with his head caught under her nightgown.

  ‘It’s not healthy,’ Gilbert complained.

  ‘He’s only a baby,’ said Olive, hauling Frank out and pushing his face between her breasts. ‘He likes sleeping with me.’

  ‘I like sleeping with you,’ grumbled Gilbert, punching his pillow.

  ‘That’s different,’ snorted Olive.

  Gilbert growled but said nothing. He wasn’t going to share their bed with this little, bright-eyed cuckoo.

  The next day he threw out Frank’s shopping basket and set to work turning one of the empty bedrooms into a nursery. It was a small room with a narrow window and corners full of shadow. But when Gilbert had finished it was a marvellous kingdom of pictures and puzzles, jewels, junk and curious treasures. There was a puppet with no head, a robot with rusty clockwork, a rocking horse and a tap-dancing bear. The bear was called Basil. He wore spectacles and black leather shoes. There was a wooden bed and an old armchair, a chest of drawers and a table with a bandaged leg. Mice dressed as sailors tiptoed along the tops of the walls and a cardboard elephant blowing a trombone spun on a string from the ceiling.

  Gilbert was so proud of his work that he began to spend as much time in the room as young Frank. He sat for hours in the broken armchair while Frank stood at the table with a box of crayons and drew pictures of his simple universe: blue sky, green earth, yellow sun, red house. Pages of scribble that Gilbert saved and glued in a scrapbook.

  Later each day, when Frank had been washed and settled into the wooden bed, Gilbert sat in the armchair and read aloud his favourite stories. He loved sitting with the book on his knees, thumbing through the pages while he waited for Frank to wrap himself up in the sheets. He relished the old fairy tales but could not resist changing them. Little Red Riding Hood survived the wolf but skinned and stewed the unfortunate beast with onions, mushrooms, potatoes and garlic. Wretched animal. Frank expressed so much concern for the wolf that Gilbert felt obliged to set it loose on another occasion to pot-roast three little pigs. When Gilbert read stories the frog prince was in danger of losing his legs, the ugly duckling could only be saved by slow cooking with plenty of herbs, the witch succeeded in roasting Hansel and Gretel and Jack curried the beanstalk. Anything could happen and there was always plenty of gravy. Frank listened carefully, sucked his thumb and frowned.

  The world felt secure in those early years at the Hercules Cafe. The m
ornings were full of smoke and steam that rolled from the kitchen into the dining room until, at noon, lost in fog, blue ghosts sat and shouted, hunched at tables, waving spoons. The nights were full of familiar whispers, pipes banging, locks snapping, rattle of chains, Olive’s shuffle on the creaking floors. Summer brought the scent of salad, canned pineapple, sour meat and warm cheese. Winter had different smells: onions, cloves, wet rubber, friar’s balsam. Frank grew and felt safe.

  ‘Do you think they’ll come back for him?’ Olive said one morning as she helped Gilbert unlock the cafe. Rain hammered on the window. The dining room smelt brown and damp.

  ‘No, it’s been years. Besides, they’ve probably forgotten all about him,’ said Gilbert, staring down the rows of empty tables.

  On such mornings he wished himself far away from the Hercules Cafe. His bones ached with the cold. He longed to be in the tropics with the dust rising from his shoes and the sun drilling the top of his head.

  ‘You couldn’t forget Frank,’ argued Olive.

  ‘But he was only the size of a gherkin when he arrived. At that age they all look the same. They wouldn’t recognise him now,’ said Gilbert. He wrapped his arm about Olive’s shoulders and kissed the side of her head. She was wearing a badly darned frock. Her skin smelt of soap. Two of her fingers were plastered.

  ‘He’ll never really belong to us,’ she sighed. She turned towards him, her face luminous in the half-light.

  ‘We could make one for ourselves,’ whispered Gilbert, pressing his mouth against her ear. ‘Someone to keep him company.’

  ‘Your nose is cold,’ laughed Olive, wiping her face as she pulled away from him.

  ‘A little brother or sister. Before it’s too late,’ pleaded Gilbert, catching her by the wrists.

  ‘Your hands are frozen,’ she complained. ‘You feel like the Abdominal Snowman.’

  ‘We could start a proper family,’ said Gilbert. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’