Songs from the Violet Cafe

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘Oh, don’t talk about saving me,’ said Belle. ‘I’m sick of being saved.’

  ‘I’ll die without you. I can’t live without you, Belle. For Chrissake, my life depends on this. I swear my life’s not worth living if you don’t believe this. Don’t do this to yourself. Get out of it now.’

  On and on, until half past one, two o’clock, and she was running away up the street, and he was standing in the pergola in the gardens howling like a kid, his head leaning against his arm, the scent of roses in the air, and women in white dresses walking past and wondering about him. The weather had begun to turn, the sky was turning streaky and dark and the first shower of the day fell, so that he was wet when he got into his car and drove back to work. Wet and crying. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Later, he would see her again, make her see reason.

  Leaving. It was in all their minds.

  The special of the day was Steak Flambé but Felix Adam said he’d just settle for a good bit of fillet, thank you very much, with some of that nice gravy or whatever it was. If his wife wanted to indulge herself, by all means order food with fire.

  John had shown Jessie how to make sauce Béarnaise. She had already made it twice on her own and each time he and Violet had assured her that she had the touch of a master. You understand the poetry of a good sauce, Violet had enthused. But tonight, at the moment when the consistency of the sauce should have been turning to that of light cream, something had gone wrong. The sauce looked curdled.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ John demanded. ‘You’re away with the fairies.’

  ‘I’ll start over again,’ Jessie said.

  ‘There isn’t time,’ he said crossly, lifting the pot onto his side of the stove. ‘Give it to me and I’ll see if I can fix it.’

  ‘What’s the point? It’s ruined.’

  ‘So if you know all about it, how come it’s such a mess?’ It was not like them to quarrel when they worked; as a rule the rhythm of their almost wordless routine was so harmonious that it felt effortless. Touching and brushing, as they passed each other, brushing and touching. Like Hester and Owen dancing.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you take another egg yolk, and beat it in a fresh bowl. The sauce has to be added to it, a drip at a time. It would be a help if you trickled it in for me while I stirred it.’ Jessie stood so close that she could feel him breathing against her.

  ‘John,’ Jessie said, ‘I have to go home.’

  Owen came into the café, his face pale. ‘Where’s Hester?’ he said. ‘I need to see her.’

  ‘She’s not here,’ said Violet. ‘What is the trouble, Owen?’

  When he turned away without answering, she said very kindly: ‘Sit down, Owen. I’m sure it will be all right. The girls will get you a coffee, something to eat. You haven’t eaten tonight, have you? No, I can see that.’

  David, sitting at the piano and playing a medley of this and that in a soft and melancholy way, watched Evelyn as she laid a place for Owen at a recently vacated table. Tomorrow it would be over. The girl would be gone, and perhaps before long, he would go too. He’d given his best in this town, and over the summer he had tried to become one of those men he was expected to grow into, but it hadn’t worked, and staying here would bring only heartache. David watched covertly for glimpses of John when the door into the kitchen swung open, and his face darkened. He looked back to Evelyn, wondered what he and the girl might say to each other, how they might say goodbye. He was sorry for her. Her father was there again, the way he so often was. This evening he had managed to attach himself to Doctor Adam and his wife, lending an attentive ear to Pauline, but really he was watching the girls, the way he always did. If David had loved Evelyn, the way he might have, he believed he would have killed Louis Messenger by now.

  Violet said, ‘Marriage can take time, Owen.’

  ‘That’s what I tell her,’ Owen said. ‘But how can it not be all right so soon? When we’ve never had a cross word in all those years we were courting?’

  ‘I don’t know all the answers,’ Violet said, answering him slowly. ‘I made mistakes of my own. I was careless and impatient and didn’t always weigh up what was best for others.’

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ Owen said, gesturing round the café. ‘You always seem to be thinking of others.’

  ‘Do I?’ Violet lifted one shoulder and let it drop. ‘That’s very flattering. Do you know, Owen, I’m being courted?’

  Owen wasn’t listening. ‘I do love Hester, you know. I’ll wait for as long as it takes.’

  Debbie, the new waitress, struck a match and held it under a silver spoonful of brandy, as Marianne produced a steak on a hot pan, straight from the kitchen. She placed it in front of Pauline Adam, as Debbie poured the brandy and set it alight with a fresh match. And it was in the ensuing rush of flames that lit up the faces of Dr Adam and his eager greedy wife that Freda Messenger threw open the door of the Violet Café. Pauline was bending forward, so that her waxy complexion looked as if it might melt in the merry racing firelight, when Freda lunged towards Marianne, almost causing a much bigger conflagration.

  ‘Slut,’ shouted Freda, in front of everyone, the guests, the staff, her own daughter, suddenly alarmed, at the far end of the café. Before anyone could stop her, Freda had pounced on Marianne, flailing her round the head with one hand, while in the other she brandished a small black and white photograph. ‘This is you, you with your clothes off, you filth, you dirty little tramp. You’re just like your mother.’

  Marianne saw the photograph, and understood, as she raised her hands to protect her face. The flames had subsided; nobody noticed Pauline flapping her hands over her sizzling hair as everyone sat mesmerised by the spectacle unfolding in front of them. Violet stood up at the desk, and moved to intervene, but Freda was not having that. She threw herself at Marianne’s blouse, grasping it at the throat, and tore the whole thing from her, so that she stood in her snow-white brassiere, the tops of her breasts exposed.

  ‘My husband, and you,’ Freda gasped. She turned to Evelyn. ‘Your friend, this girl I’ve had in my house, all these years I’ve looked after her when her mother wouldn’t, she’s been at it with your father.’

  In the kitchen, John said, ‘Leave it, Jessie.’

  Belle was standing very still at the sink.

  ‘Let them sort out their own problems,’ John said.

  ‘I have to go,’ Jessie said. ‘John, let go of me.’ Because he was holding her by her arms, his fingers in her flesh, in a way she had never felt before, hurting her. She was embarrassed that this was happening in front of Belle, but Belle showed no sign of noticing them.

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ John said.

  Jessie pulled herself free and walked into the café.

  Evelyn’s mouth was pulled back in a snarl. Lou gaped at her across the room while Debbie, the new girl, hid behind a chair. There was an unpleasant smell of burning in the room.

  ‘Freda,’ Violet said, ‘I’m calling the police. I’m warning you, one more step and you’ll spend the night in the cells.’ She was whipping the handle of the phone round, as she called the operator. ‘Emergency,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you’re no better,’ Freda hissed at Violet. ‘No wonder the tarts all come to you. To think I let my own daughter come here.’ Freda’s breath was on Marianne’s face. A weal was springing up on her cheek where Freda had scratched her. Lou stepped forward at last, grabbing Freda’s wrists and bending them back, before she attacked again.

  This was the moment Belle chose to emerge from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She went over and stood beside Lou and his struggling wife.

  ‘It’s not Marianne’s fault,’ she said. ‘It’s not Marianne he’s with. It’s me.’

  Evelyn collapsed on a chair, looking as if she was about to be sick. ‘Get that girl out of here,’ Violet said. ‘Somebody, take Evelyn away.’

  Lou threw Freda’s hands to her sides. Violet placed herself between the group and the
diners, who for the most part were picking up their knives and forks, pretending they were not interested, although the place was as quiet as the inside of a church. Lou pulled a bundle of keys from his pocket and tossed one to Owen. ‘The boat,’ he said.

  ‘Where will I take her?’ Owen asked.

  ‘You can take her to my old place,’ said John. He stepped forward. ‘I’ll come with you and open up.’ His voice held a bitter resigned note.

  In a few minutes, Marianne and Jessie found themselves standing outside the café. In a separate group, Owen and John and David, who had got up from the piano without speaking and followed the others, accompanied Evelyn down towards the lake. Nobody called out or said goodnight or goodbye. Inside the café the phone was ringing but nobody answered it.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Marianne asked. She buttoned up the jacket she had pulled on as she was leaving the café.

  ‘I don’t know where you’re going, but I’m going home,’ said Jessie. ‘As far away from here as possible. You should too.’

  ‘I don’t have a home. Just the room.’

  ‘You’ve got your stuff packed. Go, Marianne.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘I’ve got nowhere to take you. My mother’s sick. You’ll have to do this on your own.’

  ‘When are you going?’

  ‘Now. I’m hitching.’

  ‘You can’t. Feel the weather.’ Rain spat in their faces and wind was raising the hair on the backs of their necks.

  ‘Pretend it’s morning and you’re lying on a wet bank.’

  They were standing in the gathering storm, beneath a street lamp. ‘Bitch.’ Marianne’s voice held the vestige of a chuckle, despite the dark shadows under her eyes. The rain flattening her hair against her head making her look skinned and more naked than she already was. ‘What about your stuff, Jessie? You have to pack up if you’re going.’

  ‘It’s not worth taking. Return my library books if you’re still here, would you?’

  They found themselves awkwardly embracing. ‘You’ll be all right,’ Jessie said. ‘Think of Columbine.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. By the way, it wasn’t Lou who took the pictures. It was Kevin.’

  PART FIVE

  WAYS TO LEAVE

  1964

  BOATING

  The boat bearing Evelyn and David, John and Owen, headed out to open water, trailing a swollen wake. John’s old house lay to starboard, although he couldn’t make out its dark shape on the horizon. Rain and mist had closed in, obscuring the details of land. He remembered that the electricity at the house had lately been turned off, but they could light candles, make up a fire.

  Even as John was thinking this, the first hard blast hit them. The stormy wind that had been sitting in the hills all evening descended to lake level. The sky was leached of all light. The rain turned fat and cold, driving into their faces, drenching them in seconds. Suddenly the boat pitched, riding high out of the water and throwing them all sideways.

  ‘Go down below,’ Owen ordered Evelyn and David.

  But Evelyn, who had been in the boat more times than any of them, and had steered it across the lake, even when she was a child, wouldn’t go down. Perhaps, knowing the boat and the lake as well as she did, she was more quickly afraid.

  ‘Give it to me,’ she cried, trying to snatch the wheel from Owen.

  The surface of the lake had turned into a series of sharp chopping waves. It wasn’t deep, not a big enough body of water to absorb the shock of sudden violent weather. When the waves came, they were like serried rows, leaving no gaps for the boat to squeeze through, no swell they could ride out, as they might have done at sea. Others had been caught on the lake. Once John had helped rake out a body, so bloated that it fragmented when touched and had to be gathered up in pieces.

  The curtain of rain had become driving and slanted, blurring in the wind and dashing spots in their eyes. Then, as a flash of lightning illuminated their path, he saw Evelyn and Owen struggling at the wheel. Owen pushed Evelyn away, his actions panicky, as the The Wench reared up, and turned sideways in what seemed like one long agonising motion. Then the deck rolled into the water.

  John, Owen and Evelyn were thrown into the water. In a split second while wildfire raced across the sky, John saw the white shape of David’s face in the space leading to the galley and he seemed to be laughing. How could he have seen this flash of joy? Yet he did see it, he knew it. The clouds parted, and a thin band of white moon emerged above the three figures struggling in the water. The boat was riding upside down, the hull above the waterline. Evelyn reached the hull and clung, her knuckles straining. Beside John, Owen was gasping in great ragged breaths of air.

  ‘Not much …’ he said. ‘Not much of a swimmer.’

  ‘Hold on, mate,’ John said, grabbing his shoulders from behind. He began paddling towards the boat. Surely, such a big vessel wouldn’t sink, might even touch ground if it drifted. Owen was heavy as well as frightened. He reached behind him, trying to climb up on John but succeeded only in dragging his head under. John hit him in the mouth then, as hard as he could.

  ‘I’ve got to get home,’ Owen said. ‘I’ve got to get home to Hester.’

  ‘Then don’t fight me, mate.’

  They had reached the hull. Inside it, John heard banging, the trapped animal that was David, wanting to be alive after all. He pushed Owen hard up against the boat, willing him to grab it. But Owen raised his arms in a supplicating gesture and collapsed.

  ‘Come on, man, you’ve got to hold the fucking boat,’ John screamed. He grabbed the other man’s hand and found it floppy and limp and, quite suddenly, Owen dropped like a stone beneath him.

  The boat settled further in the water. Evelyn had managed to climb out onto it and was scratching and clawing the timber. ‘David’s in there,’ she cried.

  ‘I know but we can’t do anything. We’ll have to wait till help comes.’

  The two of them began shouting then, trying to tell David to stay still, to conserve his oxygen, but there was no sign he’d heard them. The pounding inside was persistent but growing more feeble. The clearing in the sky widened, and John thought he saw lights coming towards them.

  ‘Who’d come looking for us?’ Evelyn said in a weak pale voice. She was all skin and bone, he thought, skinny inside and out. But she deserved better than what she’d been handed, a jerk like her father. His brothers said Lou wasn’t a jerk, he was an okay man who’d been unlucky in his life, but John wasn’t so sure. One way or another, they were all in the drink, and Owen was already at the bottom. Still, Lou knew they were out here on the lake. Someone would come looking for them soon. He realised that the lights that he had seen came, after all, from a sprinkling of houses at the point. They were farther out than he thought, perhaps being carried towards the island. They might make land soon. Beneath them, the boat began to make a new ominous sucking sound.

  ‘Come back,’ he said, trying to pull Evelyn off. ‘She’s going down.’

  ‘I’m not leaving David,’ she screamed.

  A wall of water appeared in front of John. In an instant, the boat, the dark flag of Evelyn’s hair and the white cameo of her face disappeared beneath the surface. One moment he was swimming away from the boat while Evelyn hung on, and then it appeared that it was just him alone, and he was very tired and cold, and the wind, see sawing this way and that, was pushing him away from the island. John called out to Evelyn once or twice, but there was no answer. His voice was nothing more than an absurd whisper.

  He lay on his back, too exhausted to swim. The smell of sulphur filled his nostrils, blown across the water in erratic gusts. Then the rain stopped and the lake began to calm. An incandescent moon was now sailing in and out between the piled cumulus. He remembered the way his father, Hugo, had taught him the names of clouds — cumulus, cirrus, stratus, nimbus — and then the refrains of their combinations and variations. There were so many things his father had wanted him to do, always urging him to t
ry harder, as if looking for something special in him. One day he would want him to go away to university; on another day he would try to interest him in music.

  And there were the visits to the woman Violet; sometimes he wondered if his father preferred her to his mother. Certainly they talked a great deal, but it was mostly to do with what planting should be done at the gardens and what markets Hugo and his sons should be searching out. Violet had been connected with the world of market produce since she was a girl, and after her travels abroad she had new ideas about what would sell. These visits had begun on her return from overseas, when he was still at school and before she opened the café. They had visited her in her tiny womanly flat, drinking dark coffee out of small cups, as plans were made. It was all very intense. Yet John had found himself drawn to Violet too, and nothing that Hugo suggested appealed once she had offered him a job in the café. Perhaps he wasn’t clever enough. Or disciplined enough, his father had hinted. He saw the way Hugo frowned when he said he wanted some fun out of life. You can work and have some fun too, if you work for me, Violet said. Not that I shan’t keep you in order. Hugo said that he could do worse than learn to cook. But he wore a worried frown, as if some small chime of discord was sounding an alarm.

  It had fallen to Hugo to bring up his son John. Now that he was going to die, John tried to summon his mother’s face, but she had been a long time dead, and she had not mothered him as she had her other sons. He wanted to be a boy who was hard and strong like his brothers, or at least like Harry and Sam, for the brother above him was strong but in a way that made him afraid. John wished, too, that his mother had spoken to him in Mandarin, as she did to all the other boys when they were home. But his mother never talked to him in her native language. There are some things best forgotten, she had said, or words to that effect. As if forgetting was a job that you could get up in the morning and do. Besides, he saw that she had forgotten none of it, and her silence stood between them as some kind of reproach he couldn’t understand. Hugo was the one who looked after him, and he treated him with a gentleness that had set him apart for as long as he could recall.