The Bluebird Café (15 page)

‘I could help out more …' Paul started to say.

‘You don't want to though, do you?'

‘Well …' He obviously didn't.

‘I know what'll happen. I just know,' said Lucy. ‘Gilbert will find out and try to “help” and even bring his girlfriend. We've got to be firm with him. Oh, Paul, can't you just tell him to get lost, make him go away?'

‘None of this has happened yet. He was at my school,' Paul said, anything to avoid unpleasantness.

‘But not at the same time as you! Ten years before you!'

‘He is an orphan too.'

‘He's nearly forty! He'll ruin my café.'

‘Be kind, Lucy,' said Paul, and she felt like Emma Woodhouse shamed by Mr Knightley: ‘It was badly done, indeed.' But it wasn't fair. She was quiet for a few minutes.

‘I can't stand it much longer, though. The smell of damp, Old Holborn and bins. I know he loses us customers.'

‘We weren't exactly turning them away before Gilbert arrived,' Paul said, trying to be fair.

‘Can't you just hint that we don't want him here every afternoon?' she pleaded.

‘Can't you? Anyway, he doesn't come every afternoon any more, not since he found Mavis,' Paul pointed out.

‘Is that her name? Doesn't suit her, does it? It sounds too thin.'

‘She hasn't really got bright eyes and a lovely voice,' said Paul.

‘Bet she's got a spotty chest though.'

‘Ugh.'

But Lucy knew that Paul wouldn't say anything to Gilbert. Somehow, without appearing stubborn or selfish, he managed to avoid doing anything he didn't want to do. Lucy didn't know that he'd honed this skill as a boy, slipping out of the conversation and out of the room whenever Maggie Cloud's enthusiasms for French conversation or clearing out the garage or whatever became too much. He might just wander away, or he would back out of the room smiling, shaking his head, hands raised in mock surrender, keeping any threat to his tranquillity at bay.

Abigail and Teague heard about the dig a week before Abigail plucked up the courage to tell Lucy. She decided to leave it until Lucy would have guessed anyway, hoping that Lucy's first wave of anger or sadness would have passed before they spoke. She bought Lucy a present to say sorry, a print of shells in a bluey-green frame, it might as well be a leaving present. The dig started in a few weeks. She didn't want to fall out with Lucy, but this dig was too good an opportunity to miss.

Lucy wasn't surprised when Abigail told her. She pretended to be pleased for them and said, ‘Don't worry. I'll find someone else to help me. Maybe a nice sixth-former. If they're really young I won't feel so guilty about paying them a pittance.'

‘But they might eat all the cakes. Teenagers are always starving. You'll have to dock her wages if she eats too much. Maybe you should get an anorexic.'

‘Might put people off.'

‘Well, don't get a bulimic! Think of the waste!'

‘I'll make it an interview question. “What kind of eating disorder do you have?” And if they say “None”, I'll say, “Oh,
you must be in denial.” Well, as long as they aren't really skeletal or obese, it's clean fingernails, nice breath and no spots that really count.'

That night after they locked up and Abigail and Teague (who had been drinking Newquay Brown and laughing out loud at
A Prayer for Owen Meany
which Abigail had given him for Christmas two years ago, but which he had only just got around to reading) had left, Lucy told Paul.

‘They are going on that dig.'

‘I thought they would. When?'

‘Three weeks.'

‘You've got plenty of time to get someone to help you then,' said Paul, forgetting that he'd offered to be that someone, but everything was different, now that he'd been offered the Centre Manager's job.

‘I don't really want anyone except Abigail.'

‘But you might need someone.' She saw the shadow of Fear Of Being Dragged In cross his face.

‘I might get a sixth-former. Or just try to manage on my own for a bit. I'll just have to get up earlier. I feel like throwing the towel in,' she said, chucking some dirty tea towels towards the washing machine. Paul smiled. ‘No, really, I do. It won't be much fun without Abigail.' Her eyes were full of tears. ‘I'm too tired.'

‘I will help you, Lucy.'

‘I have been thinking about quitting. Except I don't know what else I could do. A PGCE maybe.'

‘I didn't know you wanted to be a teacher.'

‘I don't.'

‘Then don't.'

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.

‘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 to 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.