by Nicky Singer
“Please, Tilly. Just get these drinks to Table Seven. They’re screaming for them.”
Buses aren’t allowed to get drinks from the bar. It’s against the law. But we are, when required, allowed to carry them. There are four drinks on this tray. Two tall glasses of Coca-Cola with ice and lemon, one large balloon glass of honey-coloured wine, Chardonnay probably, and one shorts glass. In this glass is a shot of vodka. Vodka on the rocks with lime and soda. And even the lime can’t mask it. That thin, distilled, sweet odour that makes my heart reel.
“Tilly!”
The smell winds around my body, around and around, and up my nose.
“Tilly – for God’s sake!”
Can’t she see my hand is trembling? I cannot lift the tray. Cannot have that smell nearer me than it already is. No. Please no.
“Table Seven, Tilly.”
“You can do it, Tilly,” says Gerda. “Trust me.”
I pick up the tray and I walk.
“Where on earth are the drinks?”
Jan has his eyes on Mrs Van Day so as not to have to look at Mercy. Mrs Van Day is tall and commanding. She wears a tight black bodice under an expensive suit and her nails and her lips are scarlet. She presides over the table. She directs the conversation, commandeers it, drives it like an army man might drive a Saracen tank. She is thrilled to inform Mrs Spark that not only is the sponsorship deal agreed with the local paper, but she has big news. Really Big News.
“It’s confirmed. They rang me this morning. Sunday. Can you believe it? Sunday morning. The producer himself.”
“Yes?” says Susan Spark.
“The producer of Pop Idol. He’s agreed to send a scout. Yes, a scout for the programme at our little show! And of course he’s not making any promises, can’t say they’ll choose one of our talents for the TV show but – well, you know me, Susan …”
“Marvellous,” says Susan Spark. “I don’t know how you do it, Gloria.”
“So, Jan,” says Mrs Van Day, leaning forward and giving a little laugh. “It could be you. You could be famous.”
Jan manages a small smile. But he doesn’t lift his head because he can feel her eyes on him. Not Mrs Van Day’s, but her daughter Mercy’s. She’s waiting for a reaction. But what reaction can he give to “famous”? Being famous is not something to which Jan aspires. He aspires only to get through this meal, sitting beside the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, without making a fool of himself. There he’s said it. Mercy Van Day – the most beautiful girl in the world. Did he say world? Yes, world probably. She’s the kind of girl you see in pictures, the princess girl with the long blonde hair (Mercy’s hair is short, but very blonde), the melting eyes and the perfect body. The sort of girl who always gets the prince. Only Jan is not a prince. Never has been, never will be. He doesn’t say enough. Doesn’t have the right words in his mouth. So the princesses walk on by. Only this one hasn’t, this princess is sitting right beside him with need coming off her like sweat. He’s burning up with the way she’s looking at him. And she’s been looking at him this way from the moment he came into the restaurant.
The Van Days were already seated when he and Susan Spark arrived. But Mrs Van Day rose, she towered.
“This is my daughter, Mercy,” she said.
And he’d held out a hand, as you would to a stranger, but she wasn’t a stranger, she said. They’d met before. And he’d nodded, of course, partly to validate her and partly because of the look she was giving him, a stare so intent that he was forced to drop his own gaze. And he’s barely lifted his head since. But he doesn’t have to. He can see her in the bright silver of the candlestick, in the shimmering curves of the glasses which wait for water. And he can smell her. That rosy white English girl skin. Bathed and soaped and perfumed but still with that musky, needy, animal tang. He swallows. His throat is parched.
“Really,” says Mrs Van Day. “I’ve never known the service here so slow. What can they be doing? Pressing the grapes?”
“Oh look,” says Jan’s mother. “Here we are, I think.”
A waitress comes to the table. “Vodka?” she says.
And when he hears that voice, Jan lifts his head, he looks up.
It is the girl from the bridge.
“Tilly!” Mercy exclaims.
But the girl only has eyes for Jan. Those same angry eyes she had at the bridge. As though he has no right to be in this restaurant. As though, once again, he has intruded. And he would like to say something, defend himself, or just make her relax. But what can he say? He does not know her. Yet he feels as if he knows her. Veron. She walked into his dream and knew him. When he was a tiny child and woke screaming in the night, Susan Spark said, “Hush, hush, it is only a dream.” As if dreams were nothings, curls of smoke which would dissipate in the morning air. But his dreams stay with him. And the girl is in the dreams.
“Vodka,” Tilly says again, as though she is biting the word.
“That’s mine, dear,” says Mrs Van Day.
It’s then that Jan sees the doll. Or at least the doll’s head. It protrudes from Tilly’s apron pocket. A shining mass of black hair. And he has an urge to touch, to reach out his hand, because he has a sudden vision (perhaps a dream) of the doll as a physical pain. As if, perhaps, the girl keeps the doll as close to her as he keeps stump-armed Violeta. And, perhaps, suffers as much.
But if he moves a hand, the girl moves faster.
She bangs a glass down in front of him. Coke slops.
“Oh,” exclaims Mrs Van Day.
And then, sharp as a needle, Mercy’s voice says: “Do you two know each other?”
I’m back at the bus-boy station. I don’t know how I unloaded those drinks from the tray. Put that glass of swirling vodka down with the boy looking, staring. The way he does. As if he knows something. Looking at me. Looking at Gerda. I saw his eyes slip right down, and I couldn’t touch her, protect her, because I needed both hands for the tray, the drinks. What does he want?
Jan.
That’s what she called him. Jan.
Repeating it. “Do you know Tilly, Jan?”
Her boy then. The hunted, hunting boy from the bridge is Mercy’s boy. The drill-eyed hound at my back is Mercy’s Inca god.
Gerda says: “Be calm.”
But I am not calm. I can still feel Mrs Van Day’s hand as it closed over mine.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “to hear about your mother.”
Mercy’s mother pitying me. Mercy’s mother still alive. Sitting there at the table having lunch. With Jan and his mother. Mother and daughter. Mother and son. Two perfect families. Happy, smiling.
I’m so sorry.
So sorry.
So sorry.
“It’s full,” says Aaron, through his nose.
“What?”
“The rubbish bin,” he says very slowly and very nasally. “You can’t fit any more bottles in because it’s full.”
I look down. In each hand I have a beer bottle and I’m pushing, I’m forcing them down into that overflowing bin, as though I would break them, crush them, smash the glass.
“Here,” says Aaron. “I’ll go empty it.”
“No.” I heave the bin liner from the plastic container. Bottles clash and clink. “I’ll do it.”
“It’ll be too heavy for you,” says Aaron. He likes to take rubbish to the kitchen. On the way back he filches chips.
“Leave off. I’m taking it.”
His need for food is strong, but not as strong as my need to be away from those happy, happy families. I lug the bin liner around the counter.
“Watch it,” says Janey as I bang into her legs. But I go on, kicking the bag towards the kitchen steps. Kicking it down the steps. Clink. Clash. Clash. Clink.
The nearer I come to the bottom, the hotter it gets. Gas jets flare, ovens exhale and heat clings to the ceiling strip lights. A radio thump-thumps behind the noise of the washing-up machine.
“Kiss my arse, two roast beef,” yells Chef.
Above the steel stoves extractor fans whirl uselessly. A huge vat of gravy heaves and roils.
Chef stirs a finger in a tray of Yorkshire puddings.
“These are dried sea sponges aren’t they, Phil?”
I have to be careful, manoeuvre my way between the apple sauce and gravy stove and the salad preparation table. The space is narrow and the floor greasy.
“Isn’t Aaron on today?” asks Phil.
I grunt.
“Does that mean you turned into Aaron?” Phil remarks.
“Can you scale your omelettes down a bit?” shouts Chef.
At the back of the kitchen, near to the entrance of the alleyway where the bottles have to go, Luca is working. Despite his Italian name, Luca is Nordic looking: big, powerful and very pale-skinned. He’s flashing a knife against a steel. I hear the noise of sharpening, feel it, like the sparks were in my face. I cannot take my eyes from the flashing blade, right, left, right, left. It’s a vegetable knife of course. But a restaurant one. So it’s big and not unlike the long thin-bladed carving knife in my mother’s house.
“Turn away,” says Gerda. “Take the bottles.”
Luca puts down the steel. He smiles. He’s going to chop chillies. His movements are brutally swift. He cuts off the stalk end and then, holding the chilli between the finger and thumb of his left hand, slices a line from tip to gaping mouth. One perfect slit and then the seeds are scraped away, the red flesh pitilessly chopped, the knife moving with ferocious rhythm. And me not moving. Me rooted to the spot looking at the chopped red flesh, the pieces of it, falling away from his knife and thinking this, it looks like blood. Drops of blood, falling away from the knife. And I want to make it stop. I have to stop that blood, that knife.
“Pull yourself together, Tilly,” says Grandmother. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And Gerda says: “Mama’s all right. Mama loves you. She’ll be better in the morning. Go now, Tilly.”
But I can’t go. I’m transfixed. And any minute now Luca’s going to stop chopping and ask why I’m hanging around here with my mouth open.
“Aargh!” screams Luca.
He has cut himself. He has gashed the tip of his left index finger.
Bright red blood is blobbing on to the chopping board.
“It’s only petals,” says Gerda. “It is only petals falling. Red rose petals.”
“Aah, aah, aaah,” shouts Luca.
“Stupid git,” says Chef.
Luca turns to the basin behind him, runs his finger under a stream of cold water.
While his back is turned, I stretch up to the chopping board. Put my finger in the blood, smear it. It smells familiar. It smells of metal. In the blood are chilli bits and chilli seeds. I scoop them up, put them in the starched white pocket of my apron. Then I take out the rubbish.
The alleyway is cool, a breeze coming down from the street above. I breathe deeply. Take a stinking lungful of rotted vegetables, stale beer, car exhaust fumes, cold stone floors.
Only petals. Just red petals. I put my hand on Gerda, around her wrist. Feel the prick of the tiny, red glass beads. The triangular point of one in my fingertip. Just red petals.
I lift the bag of bottles, push it up towards the mouth of the green wheelie bin. This wheelie bin is empty. The first of the bottles thud on to plastic, then they begin to crash and smash on top of each other. A single wine bottle jams itself into the corner of the black bag, refusing to budge. I put my hand deep inside the bag, wrest it free and fling it into the bin. It bounces, clinks, spins and settles.
I am calm now.
The bag is torn. I throw it in the ordinary rubbish and then I head back through the kitchen.
Luca’s finger sports a blue plaster. He is crushing garlic, using the heel of his hand on the back of that very sharp knife. He smiles.
“Hi, Tilly,” he says. “How ya doing?”
“Fine,” I say.
He nods, crushes.
“Who’s plating up?” yells Chef.
“Coming, Chef,” says Luigi.
And I’m coming too. Up the steps and into the different hubbub of the restaurant. I will not look at Table Seven.
“Did you bring me any chips?” asks Aaron.
“No.”
“I’m starving,” he says plaintively. “Starving.”
I busy myself stacking crockery.
“Do you know those people at Table Seven then?” Aaron asks.
“No.”
“Why are they looking at you then?”
“They aren’t.”
“They are. At least he is. The boy. Is he your boyfriend?”
“Shut up, Aaron.”
“You should have got me chips. I’d’ve got you chips.” He scrapes lettuce into the bin. “And she’s looking at you.”
“Who?”
“The woman. The one with the big hair and the red nails.”
Mrs Van Day looking at me and thinking what, saying what? That poor creature, to think of that poor creature and her mother.
“The mother who loved you,” whispers Gerda.
But I hear something else, something very high and very clear, above all the noise of the restaurant. Something louder than the scrape of forks and knives, and the conversational din, something that cuts right through low music and the whisper of my beloved and it is one word.
“Darling.”
And I can’t really have heard her say it, because she is so far away. But I’m looking now and there she is, Mrs Van Day leaning across to her daughter, and her body language says it too. “Darling. My darling.” And Mercy smiles, she opens, blossoms there in the gaze of her mother. Her mother who loves her right now. Her mother who is alive.
Ping! The dumbwaiter speaks. Food for Table Seven, it says. And I know what I will do.
“No,” says Gerda.
But I have my hand in my pocket and I’m scraping out those chilli bits and those hot, hot chilli seeds and that smear of Luca’s blood. Why else would I have brought them? And I’m lifting the white flesh of the fish.
“No,” says Gerda.
I know they are having fish, mother and daughter, because I saw the fish knives and forks when I went to the table. The beef must be for Jan and his mother. But the fish … Beneath the fillet is a soft run of juices and it’s there that I tuck the red choppings and the yellow seeds and those petals of Luca’s blood.
“What are you doing?” asks Aaron.
“Janey asked me to take this,” I say. And I push Gerda down, because she’s moving in my apron pocket.
I load the plates on to a tray and then I’m off, gliding, very calmly, across the chequered floor to Table Seven.
6
Jan is at home, upstairs in his room. It is cool here and quiet. He can breathe. Though he will not, he thinks, be alone long. The women are downstairs. His mother and Mrs Van Day, sitting in the drawing room, retelling the story of the restaurant. Getting the details right: the look on Tilly’s face, the choking, the fracas, the arrival of Tilly’s father (summoned from his office by the restaurant manager). The generous, extenuating pity.
“Of course it’s to do with the poor girl’s mother.”
Mercy is sitting downstairs too. Talking, joining in as required. But also waiting. She has, he thinks, something to say, something private. So she will follow him. Yes. He is expecting her. Her smell still in his nostrils. Sweet and bitter and sexy.
Meanwhile, there is a little time and he needs that time. The doll will rest no longer. Tilly’s doll. He has it in his pocket. While she was poised with the tray, he put his hand around that mass of black doll hair and pulled. There was no resistance at all. The doll just slid out of Tilly’s apron and into his trouser pocket. It was a silent thing, though his heart pounded.
He takes the doll out now and puts it in the palm of his hand. It lies there like a stiff star, its arms and legs pulled away from its trunk. Its blue sequin eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling. It is bland, iner
t. He fingers it gently, its various skins, the black leather and the white, the coloured velvets. Nothing.
What did he expect? That the doll would move, rear up? Speak to him? Yield its secrets just because he was looking?
He touches again. This time stroking the stitches, the ugly black slashes about the doll’s white throat. Stitches that, at a distance, made him feel that this doll was a wound. More than this, that the doll was evil. The incubus that drove the girl to take her life in her hands at the bridge, who willed her to push burning seeds into the mouths of the Van Days. At the doll’s ankles are similar stitches, large, misshapen, but not hideous. No. Close to, the stitching seems merely desperate. Sad even. As though a child had made this doll, under duress, punching the needle in and out, not caring about the colour of the cotton or the size of the stitches, just wanting the job done, finished. But that’s not right either, because there is love in this doll too. The big, smiling (if lopsided) mouth, the soft and many coloured velvets, the red bracelet. The tiny glass beads painstakingly assembled, although the elastic is too tight. It bites into the white flesh of the doll’s wrist.
Jan does not understand. He concentrates, conjures again the girl’s face, reconstructs her fury. The way she looked at him up at the bridge, as though he was an intruder. And then again, at the restaurant table, the same look, an anger which made him feel … what? At fault. As though she both hated and required something of him. And so he’d acted. Pulled the doll from her pocket as he might have pulled the key from a maddened piece of clockwork. Thinking that he could make it stop. Make her stop. Unwind.
“What’s it to do with you!” she might have shouted again. But she didn’t. Just spun silently on her heels, untied her apron (so maddened she didn’t even notice the absence of the doll?), and walked out the door of the restaurant and away down the street. He’d watched her go. She’s fleeing, he thought (though she wasn’t running), fleeing, just like she did at the bridge.
“You live too much in your imagination,” his English mother says, though he is alone in the room. “There are things which are true – and then there are stories.”