by Fiona Kidman
‘So Violet solved everything?’
‘Not exactly.’ Hester was still choosing her words with care. She put her sewing down in her lap. ‘I didn’t want to be one of those women who never tried things, that’s all. Who makes excuses for not living.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Jessie said, her mind made up. ‘I like the café. I’m going to stay on.’
On Christmas Day, the café had to close. Violet said that, instead of paying guests, she would invite her staff for the best meal they’d ever had, unless of course, they were spending the day at home, in which case she wouldn’t dream of asking them to change their arrangements. Evelyn did stay home with Freda and Lou, and Belle said that of course she would be sharing God’s Word with His people and her parents and Wallace, and her sisters and their husbands and children.
‘Have a wonderful time, Belle,’ Violet said, with a thin smile.
In the end, there were Violet and Jessie and Marianne and David Finke, who couldn’t get leave from the radio station to go home to Hamilton, and Hester and Owen accompanied (to everyone’s surprise) by Ruth, looking subdued, and John. Afterwards, John would go to one of his brothers’ houses. They all still lived in the town, in big houses made of brick and tile, with wide concrete drives and wrought iron gates, spread around the new subdivision near the bay. They worked in the market garden. Harry clung more to the old ways than Sam although his wife was a modern woman who kept the accounts for the company, and was impatient with backward ways. Joe could neither read nor write, but had a wife all the same.
Violet had given each of the girls little phials of rich perfume. Jessie’s was orange blossom, the perfume so strong and provocative it took her breath away. The square bottle, half the length of a fountain pen, was something she would keep with her for years and even when its tiny rubber stopper perished, and the last drops of perfume evaporated, she would still be able to unscrew the lid and catch a whiff of that haunting long-ago fragrance.
It was John and Violet who prepared the meal for the guests, placing simple Christmas food, roast lamb and new potatoes, on beautiful brightly coloured platters. John poured wine for them all, a fragrant chianti, from a bottle not a teapot, into stemmed glasses. They opened the doors out towards the lake. The water was so close, they could hear it lapping, while the island shimmered beyond them in a heat haze.
‘Absent friends,’ Violet said, raising her glass.
They raised their glasses obediently. Absent friends, they echoed.
‘Hugo,’ she said, raising it again. ‘We miss you.’
‘Hugo,’ they chorused, except for John who said ‘to my dad’. To my mother, Jessie thought, with a stab of guilt.
‘To Kennedy,’ Violet said, ‘bless his wicked ways.’ Not everyone drank to that; Ruth folded her lips and put her hands in her lap.
‘This is poetry,’ Violet said, dreamily surveying the feast, ‘the poetry of good food. I wish my customers could see this.’
‘I gather your customers are pleased with what you have on offer anyway,’ Ruth said, intending to flatter, but somehow falling short of the mark. Her blue-veined hands trembled slightly as she lifted forkfuls of meat to her mouth.
‘Well, there’s good food and there’s excellent food,’ Violet said, resting her chin on her hand. ‘I serve good food day after day, but it’s a performance. When people come they want some drama, if I’m to continue this literary metaphor. It’s like peeling clothes off at a play — if you just brought the players on naked the patrons would think they’d been cheated.’
‘That sounds remarkably like sex you’re talking about,’ said Owen lazily. Jessie thought again what an appealing and pleasant man Owen was, and more complex than he seemed on the surface, not all raw meat and rough hands.
‘Well, yes,’ Violet agreed, ‘sex does come into it. People do often come to a restaurant before a seduction — or that’s what it was like when I lived in France. It’s a little different in a town like this, although sex on an empty stomach is always a bit of a chore, even if it’s just fish and chips, wouldn’t you agree?’
Hester had blushed again. Owen put his hand on his fiancée’s shoulder and said in a kind way that saved her: ‘Hester will tell you that after she’s married.’
Jessie saw the way Ruth quivered and subsided. There was some change in the air around Ruth — you could read this from the way she was being ignored. Jessie guessed that something had been resolved, a stand taken.
‘Quite so,’ said Violet, as if she was pleased with Owen. ‘But you see, when it comes down to it, good food is about elementary things, like fresh eggs, and onions and parsley, oranges and bread and tomatoes.’ She was passing round raspberries, settled in a dark green glass bowl.
‘And truffles?’ asks Marianne, who had only picked at her food, glancing out of the window at the lake from time to time, as if there was something or someone she hoped to see. Jessie wondered if she was looking for Lou in his white boat, with the scarlet letters on its side. There had been an uncomfortable conversation at the beginning of the meal, when Marianne said: ‘I did think Evelyn might come. Well, what do the three of them do, sitting round looking at each other, just because it’s Christmas Day?’
Violet had turned a long steady look on her. ‘I don’t think it’s any of your business, Marianne,’ she had said.
‘They did used to invite me to their place, some Christmases.’
‘Well, this year, they didn’t,’ Violet had replied, looking exasperated. Now Marianne was trying to re-enter the conversation and Violet was ready to forgive her. ‘Ah, truffles,’ she said. ‘Well, they’re the dark heart of the poem of course, that which turns simplicity on its head, as any good poem should. The most elusive metaphor, in life as in art. I’m talking about the everyday things that we don’t recognise for what they are. One year in England, after the war started, and Europe became off limits, as it were, I spent a summer in the countryside. I was still quite young then, and,’ she hesitated for just a moment, ‘very much in love at the time. Well, everything was rationed and people had long faces, talking about going without things, and yet everything we needed, with the exception of enough flour to make bread, was all around us out there in the countryside. And sugar, of course. But I never went without because I knew where to look for food. How to forage.’
Beside her, Jessie felt the pressure of John’s thigh pressing against hers, and without thinking, found herself pressing back. David Finke had a rapturous gaze in his eyes, and kept looking at John. She felt herself going red, the way Hester did; how could he know what was going on under the table?
‘But that’s not the answer to the truffles,’ Marianne said.
‘You can’t explain them,’ Violet said impatiently, as if she was losing interest in the conversation. ‘You simply remember them.’
‘We need some carols,’ Ruth said plaintively. ‘Shouldn’t we have some carols?’
‘Tell me, Ruth,’ Violet asked, at last offering Ruth some attention, ‘have you been busy at the shop? I saw you were having a sale.’
‘Not a sale,’ said Ruth, ‘just some Christmas specials.’
‘Well, that’s a comfort,’ Violet commented. ‘I thought you might have been closing down.’
There was a quick sense of malice in the air. Hester’s eyes filled with a rush of tears as she looked from one woman to the other. Choices, Violet was always insisting on choices. At this point, David got up and went to the piano. He began to play ‘Silent Night’ and ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’ and when they had sung themselves hoarse on star of wonder, star of light, he played some honky-tonk tunes that made them sing some more — When you’re near me, so help me dear, chills run up my spine/when I’m in your arms you give my heart a treat/everything about you is so doggone sweet — and his white face seemed lost in itself. John’s fingers strummed lightly on the edge of the table and the pressure of his leg increased against Jessie’s. He hooked a foot around hers, where nobody could see, e
xcept David, if he happened to look up from the piano. The table in the middle of the otherwise empty café made them marooned, apart from anywhere else in the world. Violet rested her elbows on the table, her face damp from the wine, listening to the piano, and perhaps remembering other things. Then she stood up suddenly and walked over to the piano, gesturing to David to make way for her. He glanced up, saw something in the room that made his face white and hard again, and stood up. Violet sat down, her hands straying up and down the keys, searching for something, a thread of sound that would connect her with whatever was on her mind. She began to play a sweet haunting melody, running like water in the room, as if the lake was coming in, might enfold them; a blue woman with blue hair and eyes and a way of playing that made them want to weep and sing at the same time.
Only John was able to say, ‘Delius.’ He had withdrawn his leg from Jessie’s thigh, unhooked his foot, and was sitting as if he was totally alone in the room, except perhaps for Violet herself.
‘Yes,’ Violet said.
‘My father’s favourite. Music to be sung over water.’
‘Well,’ she said, and put the lid down firmly in its place, ‘that’s that.’ As if Hugo had been finally put to rest.
The party was over. When all the dishes were washed and put away, Marianne and Jessie walked along the broad avenue leading back to the boarding house. David seemed to have disappeared. Jessie felt abandoned, wondering why John had touched her that way and then left her. The street was deserted, not a car or person in sight. The sky changed and clouds gathered. Behind them, as they walked away from the shore, the lake had turned mauve. A thick strange wind tumbled rubbish towards them down the street.
‘You’d think my mother might send me a Christmas card at least,’ Marianne said, her mood souring.
‘Did you send her one?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Nothing from Derek?’ Immediately, she regretted the question; she hadn’t seen any Christmas cards come for Marianne.
‘I’ve heard about him,’ Marianne replied, looking more cheerful. ‘I wrote to the bank and told them he was having it off with my mother and they sent him packing. He’s left town.’
‘Marianne, you didn’t.’
‘Why shouldn’t I fix the little bastard?’
At the boarding house, the landlady who had just come in from Christmas dinner at her daughter’s place told Jessie there had been a phone call from her mother the night before. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot to mention it,’ she said. ‘Christmas, such a busy time.’ Her tone reflected the extravagance of toll calls. And no, just in case Jessie was thinking of asking, she cannot ring her back, not even collect, because you just never knew with the Post Office. The next thing she’d be getting a huge bill and it would be up to her to get the money out of Jessie.
Marianne wondered if perhaps they might look at Kevin’s television in the lounge, seeing that he had gone home for Christmas, but the landlady said that the assassination was one thing, but she might have known that once she gave Marianne an inch she’d take a mile.
Later, Marianne said she had to go out for a while. She came back sooner than Jessie expected, with a face like thunder, and lay on her side with her back to Jessie without speaking. Jessie saw how her shoulders shook.
Lou was eating chicken, which was on the dry side, cooked by Freda, and paid for by her, as she’d reminded him because he was short again for the housekeeping. He knew what she was on about. That gas-guzzling boat. The three of them opened the presents they had bought each other. Evelyn’s gift to her mother was a silk scarf, tan and patterned with smudgy gold roses; for Lou there was a box of chocolates, the half-pound size. ‘I couldn’t afford a pound,’ Evelyn said, fixing him with a level gaze. Since she was old enough to buy her first ice cream, she had always calculated costs with care. Freda had chosen Evelyn’s gift, a beautiful leather satchel with her initials engraved on it, a way of saying ‘here you are, all our dreams go with you’ — or hers anyway, because it was hard for Lou to remember what dreams he was supposed to have about Evelyn. For him, there was a cashmere sweater so fine the wool seemed to melt through his fingers when he held it up. He had bought each of them a book recommended by the old woman at the bookshop. She had gift-wrapped them for him. Thank you, they said. Thank you dear. Thank you, Dad.
Lou had promised himself to do better by his family. He did not think he was a bad man. His father had often talked about the vileness of mankind, in the grave and serious way of a man whose life has been committed to stamping it out. A lawyer’s son must be beyond reproach. Even though it grieved him at the time, his son would go off to war, because that was what one did, served King and country. It was just that it was all so bloody lonely, and at the time, Lou felt scared and young. When Freda’s mother held a services’ afternoon tea for boys going abroad, there was nothing else to do the weekend before he sailed, so he went. Freda had been there handing out cakes made with lard, and afterwards favours in the gardening shed, an older girl with a tight cunt. It hadn’t seemed wicked, just something for which he would be forgiven, as he was for other girls he’d been with.
The first tour of duty, up in the Pacific, had been short. Freda had written to him, and he’d written back once or twice. When he sailed back into port, he saw what she hadn’t told him in her letters — she was up the duff.
Duty. Responsibility. Other words in his father’s ample vocabulary. He had wept, on the day of the wedding. ‘Please Dad, don’t make me.’
And still, when he was on his own, quick tears came to his eyes. He felt as if he was on his own now, and he could have blubbed, right here in front of them. Nobody seemed especially pleased that he was here at the Christmas table, in spite of the preparations. His daughter was going out with a nancy boy. She’d wanted to invite him for Christmas dinner, and Freda had agreed, but he’d said over my dead body, and nobody was speaking to him because of that. David is a nice boy, Freda had said, I don’t know what you’ve got against him. He couldn’t answer that — it was just a hunch he had. He couldn’t trust that white face and those pale eyes; he wasn’t a boy he wanted his daughter to take up with. But nobody listened to him.
The girl looked at him from under her heavy eyebrows. He wondered if she could see into his heart. There she would see, written large, you are the person who ruined my life.
‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Just for a little while.’
‘Where?’ Freda demanded.
‘There’s a wonky window at the back of the shop that we didn’t have time to fix before we closed. I just need to check it out. Unless you want me to clear up.’
‘We’ll do it,’ Evelyn said, wanting him to go, for the sake of peace.
Marianne sat huddled on the passenger side of the car, her eyes like big bruises. She’s a pretty enough kid, he thought, but not worth all the trouble he was courting. None of this was ever meant to get serious. A bit of fooling around, a few cuddles with her best friend’s old man. He saw it for what it was — a grown man playing around with a girl — and was ashamed. He had always thought her profile beautiful, had seen that she would be gorgeous even when she wore a gym slip, and sat in his kitchen drinking cocoa with his daughter. But God’s honour, if he were asked to swear on it, he’d never planned this, and she didn’t do anything for him, didn’t turn him on at all.
‘I thought you loved me,’ she said miserably.
‘You’re a sweet kid.’
‘When we got together it was fantastic.’
‘It was just the once, you know that. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.’ Remembering it as quick café kitchen sex. Hard and fast when the girl was oily and hot and scummy from cleaning up, her night to stay late and the others had gone home. He had been ambushed by her longing.
‘Sorry, is that all you can say?’
‘Yes,’ he said, steeling himself. ‘I was sorry for you.’
‘Thanks a lot. Sorry. Were you sorry when you gave my mother the clap?’
‘You’re crazy,’ he said, trying to sound steady and even, but his pulse points were throbbing.
‘I’m not,’ said Marianne. ‘I used to sleep in the same room as my mother. She couldn’t keep her secrets from me.’
‘I know she gave you a hard time.’
‘She slept with my boyfriend.’
‘D’you want to sleep with all the men your mother slept with?’ he said softly. ‘Jesus, is that it?’
‘I thought I did.’ Marianne had begun to tremble violently. ‘But then when it happened between you and me, I thought this is it. It doesn’t matter about her or any of the others, it’s just us.’ She laid her hot cheek on the car window. ‘Anyway, your family don’t talk to me any more, thanks to my mother.’
‘Freda doesn’t know for sure.’ He said this and regretted it, because now there was an admission between them, that he had slept with Sybil Linley. He didn’t know how he got into situations like this. ‘I told you when you broke up with Derek, you should leave town. Start again. What’s here for you? You’re working two jobs, it’s killing you.’
‘You’re here.’
‘You need a father,’ he said angrily. ‘That’s all.’
‘So you don’t, you know, feel anything?’
He sat in silence for a while. ‘I have to get back. I said I wouldn’t be long,’ he said at last.
‘So we’re finished?’
‘We were never started.’
‘Will you kiss me goodbye?’
‘Come here,’ he said, and put his arms around her. She clung to him, sliding her hand into one of his pockets, as if for safe-keeping. Loosening himself from her embrace, he started the car’s ignition. He felt tired and broken up.
David Finke had come home alone. He stayed in his room and played records. Dark palmy music. Music to sweat by. The wind had brought dull heat with it.
He would take the dark-eyed white-skinned girl out again. He would. He could do it. For a moment, at lunchtime, he thought he had glimpsed another kind of happiness. But he could see it was unattainable. He could take the girl out.