by Jon McGregor
So. Anyway, that’s about it right there. Yeah. Their ride never shows up. They pour out some more coffee and the one guy spits it out and goes, ‘Is cold.’ That being the first line of dialogue we heard, meaning they’re trapped in some kinda Beckettian loop or whatever. Yeah. We fade out and roll credits or whatever.
Of course it’s fucken conceptual. What do I look like to you?
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French Tea
Sutton-on-Sea
I was wiping tables. It was quiet. We hadn’t done many lunches, and they were all gone. There was only that woman in, with a tea. She was talking on, the way she does. I could see the floor needed mopping but I didn’t think I could do it while she was there. There was a swell on the sea, and a rainstorm passing over to the south. You could see the windmills really going for it, catching the light from somewhere. The only people out on the beach were the ones walking their dogs. She was saying how that was a proper pot of tea I’d made her. Going on the way she does. The usual about how you don’t always get a proper pot of tea these days, and how some places they don’t even use a pot. ‘Just dump the bag straight in the mug and expect you to fish it out yourself,’ she says. ‘Not like this,’ she says. ‘This is a proper pot of tea.’ It’s never even that clear who she thinks she’s talking to. I give her a nod or a smile now and again but that only seems to confuse her, so mostly I let her get on with it. It’s not like she’s not said all this about the tea before. I could probably have said most of it word for word.
‘I went to London once,’ she says, ‘and this young man made me a tea using the water from a coffee machine, a coffee machine, I couldn’t believe it, he used the hot water from a coffee machine and filled up one of those bowl-shaped mugs, hot water mind you, it wasn’t even boiling, it was hot water, and he put the tea-bag on the saucer and just left it sitting there.’ I was doing the condiments by then. Most people take that as a hint but she doesn’t. I collected up all the salt and pepper pots and checked them over. ‘The water getting colder and colder and the tea-bag just sitting there on the saucer doing absolutely no good to anyone, and there’s me standing at the counter watching him,’ she says. I took all the lids off the tomatoes and topped up the ketchup. She was getting a bit heated. It was usually about now that other people would notice, if they were in, and start moving away. She says, ‘I told him, I said do you mind, could you please, please put the tea-bag into the water, please, what on earth are you doing, are you making me a cup of French tea there?’
She more or less said that all in one go. It got her quite out of breath. It usually does. She said about the young man asking her what French tea was, and how she’d told him that in England we make tea with boiling water and we make damn well sure the water stays hot and that whatever it was he was doing it looked like something they’d do on the Continent. ‘I went to France once,’ she says. She looked out the window when she said it, peering over the sea as if she could see land. She said she went on a day trip there, and that was how they made their tea, and she didn’t much care for it. There were some other things she didn’t much care for but she didn’t go into details. Or at least she did, but she mumbled them under her breath, as if they were too shameful to say out loud.
All the dishes were done by then, and the condiments. I was wiping over the menus. The wind must have changed direction. The rain came up the beach and against the windows. I could see the dog-walkers making a run for it. One of them came charging in the door and I had to tell him to leave the dog outside. He just stood there without ordering anything, dripping on the floor. I was glad I hadn’t done the mopping. The woman carried on talking, and I could tell he was trying to work out if she was talking to him or not. He figured it out soon enough. ‘I’ve never bothered going back, I’m not much of a one for travelling,’ she says. ‘What’s the point of going away? You only have to come back.’
The man didn’t really know where to look, I could tell. I told him the rain would blow over soon enough and he nodded.
‘All these people jetting off all over the place,’ the woman said, still rattling on. ‘I don’t know what they think they’re going to find. It’s all the same. People are the same. And you can’t get a decent cup of tea. Not for love nor money. This is a decent cup of tea. In a pot. Proper china. Fresh milk. It’s not rocket science. But that man just stood there looking at me, asking me what I meant, and all the while the tea-bag was just sitting on the saucer and the water was getting colder and colder. I ask you. Really.’
The rain stopped and the man went out. His dog came bounding over and shook all the water off while the door was still open, so that went all over the floor. I went and put the door on the catch, and turned the boilers off, and started cashing up.
‘Take my daughter,’ she says. ‘She’s off working in some country or other. Doesn’t seem to have broadened her mind. She’s been gone nearly a year now and she’s barely even written. Don’t even rightly know where she is. And you can bet your bottom dollar she’s not getting a decent cup of tea. This is a decent cup of tea. This is a proper cup of tea. This is what you want to expect when you ask for a tea. A pot and a jug and some good china. It’s important to know what to expect. You expect to get what you expect. You don’t get that when you go away. You don’t know what to expect. Leaving the bag on the saucer like that, with the water going cold. And you only have to come back.’
The sun was out for a minute, and the sea was shining, but there was another shower coming in. I started filling the mop bucket, and turned a couple of chairs over. She started getting all her bags together. She shook her head a few times, as if she was annoyed with something.
‘Listen to me going on,’ she said. The way she says it, it sounds like that’s really what she means. What she wants. But I had things to be getting on with.
Close
Gainsborough
She wouldn’t tell Patricia. She’d decided that before even saying goodbye, before she’d stood there and listened to his footsteps crunch away through the gravel. What was there to tell anyway. It was only talking.
And he’d approached her first. When they were standing in the reception room, holding their information leaflets and waiting for the tour of the Imperial Palace to begin. You’re English right, he’d said, and she’d nodded, and he’d asked if they might swap cameras for the morning, for the duration of the tour. Which she hadn’t understood straight away. He wanted his picture taken, he’d explained, with his camera, and he wanted to return the favour. Which was no sort of favour at all because she didn’t like being in her own holiday photos. She knew what she looked like.
It’ll save us swapping back and forth every time, he’d said.
It had seemed rude to say no, once he’d asked. And there had been other people standing there, other people he could have asked, but he’d asked her. Which was something.
He was in Japan for three weeks, he’d told her. Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. The whole shebang. Spending his army pension, because he figured what the hey it’s just sitting there and he happened to have this time on his hands. He was between jobs, he said, smiling in a way which was surprising for such a big man. Boyish was the word she thought of, although she didn’t think he was any younger than her. Ex-US Army Engineers, so he’d seen a few countries in his time but had never been to Japan, always wanted to. Been working in a repair shop the last few years, welding, but the work had dried up. Living in Duluth, Minnesota, which when you figured all the countries he’d been through it was funny how it wasn’t a million miles from where he’d started out. Good place to be, and it was handy for where his kids lived now.
He’d told her all this before the tour had even started, and in return she’d told him that she was a school secretary from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire – like the artist, she’d said, although it’s no oil painting, and she’d been surprised when he laughed – and that she was only here for a week. He’d done more of the talking, it was fair to say.
&nb
sp; And when they’d introduced themselves, just as the tour began, he’d held out his hand for her to shake. Which she hadn’t been expecting. He had a very large hand. He was really quite a large man, he looked sort of like a rugby player or something and she could see even from where she was standing that none of it was fat. Shaking hands with him had made her feel sort of petite. Which she certainly wasn’t used to.
Wade, he’d said. Elizabeth, she’d replied.
That room though. If they were going to have that many people waiting in there for the tours to begin, they should have had a fan or something. Air-conditioning. It was too hot, really. Close.
He’d asked her to take the first picture almost immediately, as the group was walking across the great expanse of white gravel, the crunch of their footsteps swallowed up by the hot, still air. He’d been asking where else she was visiting while she was here, if she’d been out of Kyoto at all, and she’d said yes, there were day trips organised as part of the package she was on: to Nara, Himeji, Hiroshima. She’d felt awkward mentioning Hiroshima, as if he might have felt some kind of association. Oh yeah, he’d said, I went to Hiroshima, day before last. That was something else. Awesome. And he’d made this long, loud sigh, as if he was trying to clear stale air from his lungs. Not really a fun trip, but you kind of have to, he’d said, looking at her. Waiting for her agreement, which she’d happily given, nodding and saying oh absolutely I think so. Which was when he’d looked round at the first of the palace buildings and suggested getting a picture right there, standing and framing himself against it while she lifted his camera to her face.
And if she does tell someone about this when she gets home, not Patricia but someone at least, she’ll say that this was when she first noticed, properly, what he looked like. There was the moustache, of course, and the sheer solid size of the man. But there was something else, something soft and quiet in his face and his eyes, something that contrasted with his loud talk and his oversized hands. It was nice, looking at him like that through the viewfinder.
They’d changed places then, as the rest of the group moved away, and she’d felt her already flushed face colour further as he’d looked at her through her camera, and wished she’d been wearing a different outfit. Something cooler. Something less pink. And something other than that pair of trousers. Patricia had told her before that they didn’t work – they don’t do anything to help with your size is all I’m saying, she’d said, the only time Elizabeth had worn them in the office – but she’d got up in a hurry that morning and they were the first thing that had come to hand, and the whole outfit had looked nice in the air-conditioned hotel room, had looked cool and elegant and English-roseish. But now, standing for a picture she didn’t want taken anyway, she just felt hot, and pink, and fat. And so why did she even think he might have been interested. She wasn’t seventeen any more. Not by a long way.
The tour guide had already started by the time they’d caught up with the rest of the group. His Imperial Majesty would arrive from long journey in ox-drawn carriage, she was saying, pronouncing ox-der-awn-car-riage very precisely, as if it was essential that they understood. She described the entrance building behind her, with its low flight of steps and receding series of empty rooms lined with painted silk screens and tatami-mat floors.
She’d felt Wade nudging her. How d’you find life in Gainsborrow? he’d whispered. She’d been a bit embarrassed that he was talking while the guide was talking, but still.
It’s Gainsborough, she’d whispered back, and he’d put his hand over his mouth and made an apologetic face, which was nice that he thought it was important. Sorry, he’d whispered; how’s life in Gains-bor-ough, splitting the word up the way the tour guide had done with ox-drawn carriage, which was maybe a bit mean but very funny as well the way he did it, and so then it had been her turn to put her hand over her mouth, to hide her laughter. It’s not bad, she’d said, it’s not the centre of the universe but it’s a nice place to live. He’d held up his hands when she’d said that. Hey, he’d whispered, we can’t all live in the centre of the universe, can we? It’d be a bit crowded if we did; and that had made her laugh again, and this time one or two people had turned around to look.
They’d clicked very quickly, that was the thing. That was something else that was new.
So, the guide had said then; please now to the Oi-ke-ni-wa Garden. And everyone had turned and followed her across the gravel, except that by some silent agreement Wade and Elizabeth had waited and lagged a short way behind.
Wade and Elizabeth. It had a ring to it, but what was she thinking.
She’d asked him if he liked living in Minnesota, and he’d said, sure it was fine, it was home, and he’d mentioned again that it was good to be near to his kids. He’d asked her if she enjoyed being a school secretary, and she’d said she supposed there were worse jobs she could be doing. He’d laughed, and said that was true enough, and she’d asked about his children. You mentioned your children were nearby, she’d said: are they at university or something? Surprising herself even as she said it, because she didn’t always find small talk easy but this time she had. Which had made her think.
He’d looked at her, and she’d realised straight away that she’d missed the point. No, he’d said, they’re too young for that just yet. They’re living with their mother.
She could have died. Right there. Really.
Oh, she’d said. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.
No, it’s okay, he’d said. It was a while ago now. These things happen, you know how it is. He’d made a face, a sort of knowing frown, as if to say I’d rather not go into details but I’m sure you can guess. She wasn’t sure that she could. The thing kind of got out of hand in the end, he’d said. The moment had kind of passed. She nodded slowly, in a way which she hoped looked like sympathetic recognition. You got children? he asked.
No, she said, no I haven’t.
He looked like he was waiting for her to add something, but she didn’t. Because what would she have said. Because what else was there to say.
The other people on the tour had all been younger than her and Wade, and she’d wondered how it was that young people these days seemed able to travel anywhere in the world that took their fancy. This was just one holiday among many for them, and the ones who didn’t know each other already were asking about it; none of them saying where you from?, she noticed, but rather where you been? and where you headed? One of them, a tall American girl in a sleeveless top and a pair of sensible walking shorts, all long brown limbs and neat blonde hair, had turned to Wade and said hey how’s it going, as the tour guide led them through the garden to the next talking point, and Wade had said hey, good, thanks in reply. Leaving Elizabeth a bit stranded as they started a conversation of their own.
It was a beautiful garden. There was a lake, a large pond really, with a low arched bridge at one end, and a pebbled shore, and a stream winding down towards it from a stand of bamboo. There were the usual clipped and twisted trees, and carefully placed rocks, and mossy seating areas. The whole garden felt natural and artificial at the same time, and she wondered if there were hidden meanings to the arrangement which you were meant to decode. She’d wanted to say something to Wade about it, but he’d still been talking to that girl, asking her where the best temples in Cambodia were – the girl had been to Cambodia, of course – and she couldn’t catch his eye. She’d waited for them to finish their conversation, and when she’d realised she’d been standing there too long she’d moved away a little, looking at the bridge on the far side of the lake, looking at the tour guide, looking at the palace buildings and the other people in the group. Because it didn’t matter if he wanted to talk to someone else. Because why would that matter to her. She stood off to one side, holding his camera, waiting. Like some sort of she didn’t know what. Spear-carrier. Spare part.
That girl though. It must be sunny all the time where she was from, judging by how tanned those long slim limbs were, the carefree freckles on he
r face. She must have never lost a night’s sleep over anything, she’d thought, and been surprised by her own bitterness. Because was this who she’d become, already. She tried to remember, and she couldn’t, when she’d last been able to wear shorts, or anything without sleeves.
What sort of a name was Wade anyway, she’d found herself thinking.
So, please, the guide had said then; please, this is Oh-ga-ku-mon-jo. In festival times poetry recitals would be held here, she’d said, and gestured towards a painted silk screen in an open room behind her. The painting showed a group of finely dressed courtiers sitting cross-legged in a garden, and the guide had explained that this was the garden they were standing in now. If you look, these courtiers are sitting beside stream, she’d said; and this is same stream here, with same group of three rocks also.
She just didn’t know her way around this sort of thing, was the problem. She wasn’t familiar with the territory. She couldn’t read the situation, if there was ever a situation to read. Patricia had told her once that she was better off without a man, that she couldn’t imagine the trouble they caused. Elizabeth assumed she’d meant well, but she really hadn’t appreciated it. She’d said, Patricia, if I want your opinion on my private life I’ll ask and until then I’d rather not have that sort of comment thank you. Which Patricia hadn’t responded to, but when she’d refilled the paper tray on the photocopier she’d slammed it so hard that Elizabeth had been surprised it didn’t break.
