Story, Volume II

by Dai Smith

  ‘Jackie, you’re meeting and greeting and taking orders. Rhian, you’re taking coats and showing to tables. And Rhian,’ he added, ‘better not do any serving, is it? Not with the way you dish out soup.’

  He was being bitchy and I stared at him under the brim of my hat, giving him attitude, but he turned away.

  It was getting that Alwyn took another job off me every night. He was right about the soup, though. If I was carrying it, there was no point putting it in a bowl; it always ended up in the serving plate, with the doily drinking it like a Kleenex. And I couldn’t manage vegetables that were too round; the peas would make a break for it, and I could only keep the potatoes on the plate if they were mashed. I spent most of my time in the kitchen, scraping butter from a big plastic vat into individual china pots. The trick to getting the butter smooth on top was to breathe on it, to warm it, but I didn’t let Alwyn see that.

  At the end of the night, Chef would give us leftovers to take home. Fat Benny would only take bread.

  ‘Go on, Fat Benny, there’s a lonely Glamorgan sausage here without a butty. Or how about this salmon steak? Lovely bit of fish; the skin’s come off is all.’

  But Fat Benny would shake his head and look as if he were going to cry.

  ‘All right. Bread it is.’

  And we would tumble the brown, floury rolls into Fat Benny’s Adidas bag.

  ‘He do look all right on it, though,’ said Jackie.

  ‘He looks like an autopsy,’ said Chef; and these two things meant that Jackie didn’t like Benny, and Chef did.

  There’s a bottle of vodka on the edge of the bath, incongruous beside the two shampoos. Mine is Plus-Conditioner-for-Damaged-Hair, with a picture of, I think, a vitamin on the side. Dad’s is Anti-Dandruff, with a static dribble of turquoise paste obscuring the letters. His razors are rusty and leaking, sitting in a pool of their own orange blood.

  Tonight I showed Fat Benny how to make napkins into shapes.

  ‘Want to see a crown?’

  He nodded, wedged in the corner, keeping his bum warm on the oven. I flapped the napkin open, folded and pinched, folded again.

  Jackie was serving in the restaurant and Alwyn was going round the tables, talking to the customers. He did it to emphasise that he was the owner; a businessman, crachach, not an employee like his little waitresses. When he said, ‘We hope you enjoy your meal’, the ‘we’ was practically royal.

  Alwyn divided the customers into two categories: the first was the Smart Regulars, who were rich, and used to eating out, and didn’t bother to dress up for it. Alwyn would rub his hands and smile at them like he had greased his teeth.

  His second category was the Special Occasions. These were the people who had saved up, and came dressed in their best, most uncomfortable clothes for the treat. The men had big hands with scrubbed, raw knuckles. The women wore perfume that made me sneeze. They cringed silently in their seats, spooked by the sound of their plain conversation in this chichi, unfamiliar place. When Alwyn talked to them, they stared at him like cats, and whispered when he’d gone: ‘That was the owner.’ He always sat the Special Occasions by the toilets.

  Jackie’s categories were Good Tippers and Bad Tippers.

  My categories were Human and Inhuman, depending on how they treated us.

  I was supposed to be microwaving the Welsh cakes so they’d feel fresh-from-the-oven warm. Chef had disabled the timer to stop it going ‘ping’ and giving the game away, so you had to watch it.

  ‘There you go.’

  I gave Fat Benny the napkin crown and he perched it on his shiny head, did a little dance. His big, melon face split into a ripe smile and he made his laugh sound, a high-pitched, soprano wheeze.

  ‘Now we’ve both got hats,’ I said, and we grinned at each other.

  Chef had finished up and gone home by this time. I had nothing to do except wait until Alwyn called for the Welsh cakes. I checked the bow on my hat so I’d be ready straight away; Alwyn was always saying, ‘It’s not the customers’ job to wait; it’s our job to wait on them.’

  I used to complain to Jackie that, if I found the restaurant management book where he read that, I’d burn it. But tonight, when I looked around the kitchen at the white tiles streaked with rainbows of detergent, and the family of knives hanging from Grandpa to Baby on the wall, I thought: I wouldn’t mind doing this. Creating this order, this cleanliness. I could go back to college and do Hotel and Restaurant Management. Food Hygiene. Catering.

  ‘What do you think, Benny? Could I do Restaurant Management?’

  Benny widened his eyes. He breathed in as if about to cough and, in a high, girl’s whisper, said:

  ‘The bread’s not for me, it’s for my mam. She do soak it in milk. It’s her teeth, see.’

  He put his hand to his mouth, astonished at himself, and we stared at each other. I had never heard him speak before, and now I realised with surprise that he was quite young: perhaps nineteen or twenty. I didn’t know what to do. Did he want me to congratulate him, or would it just make him shy? It felt like giving someone a card when you’re not sure it’s their birthday.

  ‘Benny,’ I said, unfolding another napkin, ‘Do you want to see a swan?’

  Benny’s mam.

  She has Benny’s ham arms, encased in the sleeves of a floral dress, and the same bald head in a curly wig. She is as silent as her son; they communicate telepathically, watch sitcoms with the sound down, and laugh so only dogs can hear.

  When my own mother left, I used to imagine her going back to her drowned village. Walking into the water in her dress, the skirts billowing around her as she dived and searched for her house; or crying on the shore like a mermaid, her hair streaming. But my dad said she’d found a new boyfriend in Merthyr.

  Alwyn came into the kitchen, rubbing his hands together briskly like a fly.

  ‘Where have all the napkins gone?’ he said, then, ‘Ah, Rhian, have you done with them Welsh cakes?’

  I pressed the catch and the microwave door sprang open as if the Welsh cakes had rebelled and were kicking their way out. But they were safe, tanned and toasty under the hygienic kitchen neon. They slid wilfully on the plate, but I corralled them against my chest, sprinkled them and my daffodil with a shower of sugar, and offered them for Alwyn’s inspection.

  ‘Well, they look fine,’ he said. He chose one, snapped it open, and we watched as a currant gave up its last puff of moisture. The cakes were burnt, dry, as solid as shortcake.

  ‘Oh no! Oh Alwyn, I’m sorry!’

  Alwyn took the plate from me. He tipped the cakes and their greasy, sugared doily into the pedal bin, and we heard them scuttling like coal to the bottom. Without looking at Benny, Alwyn handed him the plate for washing and, when he finally spoke, flecks of spittle sparked from his mouth.

  ‘Look, Rhian…’

  ‘I’ll do some more! It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘No, no, don’t bother. Just… take the dessert trolley out, will you?’

  There was only one table left now, or rather two, pushed together for a party; businessmen from London, in Cardiff for a conference. We got more English customers here than Welsh. They came for the lovespoons decorating the wall, the spinning wheel in the corner, for Jackie and me sweating in our tall hats. There must have been photographs of us all over the country: two life-size peg dollies with eyes scalded red by the camera flash.

  ‘Say cheese!’

  ‘No, say “caws”! That’s Welsh for “cheese!”’ Alwyn was taking an evening class at the university.

  I had taken the businessmen’s coats to the cloakroom and, alone in the dark, stroked the collars and cuffs, slotted my hands into the flat, empty pockets. Next to those tiny stitches, my own clothes felt as clumsy as a doll’s.

  Jackie had smelt money, and now I heard her laughing with the men, responding to their banter; giggling for tips where I would have tried for a smart answer. I wobbled the trolley towards them, the thick carpet catching in its wheels, jingling the
dishes and making the trifle tremble as if it were afraid. The noise seemed vulgar. I was ashamed.

  ‘Here’s Blodwen Mark Two!,’ shouted a man at the head of the table.

  ‘Hello, Blodwen!’

  Jackie muttered to me through her clenched smile, ‘We’ve got a right lot here; they’re calling me Blodwen too,’ then; ‘You’ve got cream all up your shawl.’

  The shawls got into everything. I wiped the cream off with my apron and parked the trolley.

  ‘Good evening! Tonight we have sherry trifle, lemon meringue pie, apple tart and custard…’

  One of the men pulled me by the strings of my apron to stand next to him.

  ‘Never mind the meringues, Blodwen; give us a song!’ He smelt of brandy and cigars, and rich-food farts. There was a splash of dried gravy on his chin.

  ‘I can’t sing!’ I smiled to soften the refusal.

  ‘Nonsense; all you Welsh can sing. Come on!’ He started banging the table, waved at the others to join in:

  ‘Song! Song! Song!’

  I glanced around the table in a panic; the faces of the men ran together, became a film, a flicker picture of one man ageing. In his twenties, the shoulders still firm, the hint of a squash racquet in the back of the company car. Then the weight of seniority silting down through the years, the tailoring becoming more careful to hide the bulk. A daring, last-chance moustache at fifty, the word ‘distinguished’ starting to apply, then the silver hair, the golden handshake, and first-name terms with the doctor. The same man, the same men; a row of grey cloth with a shared mission statement – only the coloured ties, like a Warhol print, to tell them apart.

  One of the men spoke, and the picture refracted again.

  ‘Steady on!’ he said slowly, his words chewy with alcohol. ‘The girlie’s trying to do her job.’

  The first man replied as if I wasn’t there: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll leave her an enormous tip.’

  I heard myself shout, in a furious rush, ‘All right! I’ll give you a song!’

  They cheered, with no idea that I was angry, or even that I could be. I folded my hands across my apron like a trembling bird, and began to sing:

  ‘There was an old farmer who sat on a rock,

  ‘A-waving and shaking his big hairy…’

  I was into the second verse when Alwyn came screaming out of the kitchen like a fire engine in tasselled shoes and dragged me away.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ A purple vein twitched on his red temple.

  ‘They asked for a song.’

  ‘Good God!’ He threw his arms in the air and I flinched, although he’d had no intention of hitting me. Benny cowered in the corner, frantically washing and rewashing a clean plate, as Alwyn marched up and down the kitchen, his little feet pit-patting on the tiles, repeating his mantra: ‘The good restaurateur remains calm at all times.’ Then he turned to me and took a deep breath.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘This job, well, it hasn’t really been working out, has it?’

  I felt sick and serious. My hands filled with sweat, dripping cold between my hot fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I said, ‘I’ll do better in future, honest I will!’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, echoing me, ‘I’ve already spoken to another girl who worked here before. See, her husband’s left her and she needs the money. We’re having her back.’ He looked at me and added slowly, to be sure that I understood, ‘Instead of you.’ The way he said it, I knew he’d practised it. I knew it was a lie.

  ‘I need the money,’ I said, but Alwyn had already turned his eyes down, dismissing me.

  ‘You’re young,’ he said, ‘You’ll find another job, easy. I’ll put a bit extra in your last wage packet. OK? All right? All right, then. Off you go now, and bring the uniform back any time you like. By Thursday, at least. And have it cleaned, will you? There’s cream all up the shawl.’

  I saw Benny’s face like a snapshot, mournful and melting in the background. My bag was hanging on the back of the door, hidden in a row of coats on their hooks, and I pulled at it, tugged in sudden fury until the whole lot came down with a sound like snow falling from a roof. I saw my own mac sprawled under the pile of headless bodies and hauled it out. Its empty arms embraced me as I ran.

  I saw a postcard once; a woman lying in a river with all her clothes on, and flowers. Now I unpin my fake daffodil, the pin resisting in the wet tweed, and hold it to my chest. The shawl is heavy with water, I feel its weight when I move my shoulders. It has become crimson where it was white before.

  The water has cooled again. I let it out and run more hot, and swill my skirt around to see the dye billowing scarlet. The best, though, is the hat; the steam has broken it down, the brim is collapsing onto my face. Little flecks of black felt are breaking off and floating in the water, like the specks you see in your eye when you’re tired; or like water boatmen, who dent the smooth, wet light with their insect feet. They scatter in the breath of my laughter. Even a smile seems to move them.

  I stand up in the bath and the water pours from me in a loud wave, then slows to a trickle. The clothes are heavy, but supporting their weight makes me feel strong, defiant.

  I pull the plug, and the red water starts running out.

  MISS GREY OF MARKET STREET

  Robert Nisbet

  It was around three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and Market Street lay grey and wet under the half-hearted shafts of sunlight which only occasionally broke the cloud. A tentative snowfall that morning had turned to slush, and splashed up now and again from passing cars.

  The shop fronts were bright enough though, and the delicatessen at the bottom end of the street sparkled just a little with the warming ranges of spirits, liqueurs and chocolates stacked along the window, with the cheese, yogurt, teas and coffees behind. Miss Grey, pecking, tripping, daintily white-haired, made her way towards the shop.

  She fluttered into it in a rather delicate way, a slight presence, her sharp, bird-like features softening just occasionally. Now, as habitually, she stepped neatly and precisely over to the stacked rows of Oriental teas, where she pottered long and quietly, in a rapt and quizzical absorption.

  It was nearly fifteen years since she’d retired as founder and principal of a small prep school in the town. And more than that, she was Miss Grey, one of the Greys of Market Street, and the Greys had been for many years one of the more prosperous local business families. The grocery had been founded by her father before the First World War. Continued and expanded by Miss Grey’s brother Denzil, it survived into the age of the supermarket as, to quote Denzil’s official designation, ‘the quality grocery’. Only with Denzil’s retirement in the mid-70s did the shop pass to a Swansea firm who, much to Miss Grey’s relief, had preserved Denzil’s original byline: ‘quality grocery’.

  Miss Grey was shopping for tea. To the girl at the counter, this was all part of a rather quaint ritual, conducted regularly once a fortnight. Around three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon the old lady would wander in, her main shopping for the week being done in the morning, and would gaze along the rows of Oriental teas. She’d turn the small wooden boxes, read from their inscriptions, linger for quite a while before eventually selecting one and proceeding with it to the counter. It was all so habitual and so harmless as to create little, if any attention.

  But to Miss Grey it was important. She was shopping for tea. She wasn’t that well off: the prep school had left her with little by way of profit, and, despite Denzil’s devotion to the idea of quality – or perhaps because of it – the business hadn’t thrived. Miss Grey had inherited little on Denzil’s death a couple of years earlier. But still, cramped though she was by a genteel poverty, she looked for quality, and was satisfied, in the last resort, if she could find it in just one area of her domestic life. Her gaze ranged over the titles on the boxes: Keemun China, Russian Caravan, Earl Grey, Gunpowder Green, Orange Pekoe, Ceylon Breakfast. There was a whole wealth there, of dreams and su
ggested gentility. After some thought, or some dreaming, she picked down a box of Russian Caravan, and made her way to the counter. She wanted a good blend. Terry would be coming to tea again, and she wanted things nice for him.

  Terry, Miss Grey’s nephew, arrived about five o’clock, spruce in his Saturday suit, just back from the football match, scrupulously wiping the mud from his shoes in the doorway, before perching on the edge of a stiff and ancient armchair. He looked like her relative. The same bird-like features were exaggerated by soft pecking movements of his head, a slight squint and an occasional nervous twitch. He would jab and squint a curious half-quizzical assent to everything Miss Grey said, but he was still ill at ease in the gentility of her drawing room. It was only six months since he’d started going there, since his return from Margam. And yet: he had come home, he’d wanted to come home, and Miss Grey was part of home. He wanted to get to like it there.

  After they’d finished the cakes and sandwiches and were drinking tea, Miss Grey motioned to Terry to stay where he was and went to the kitchen. She came back with the wooden box of Russian Caravan tea which she’d emptied into a tea caddy.

  ‘I thought you’d like to see this, Terry.’ She passed it over. Terry’s large and rather clumsy hands fumbled the box awkwardly as he gazed at it in determined concentration.

  ‘It’s the box the tea was packed in,’ said Miss Grey. ‘Russian Caravan. Do you see?’

  Terry’s reply was stammered and clumsy. ‘It’s nice. It’s nice tea.’

  Miss Grey smiled with a pecking eagerness. ‘There’s a story about the tea, on the side of the box. Shall I read it to you?’ Terry blushed, but nodded.

  Miss Grey was suddenly self-conscious, but caught by a gust of enthusiasm at the same time. She told him the story of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia who in 1735 had set up the first caravan tea trade between Russia and the Far East.

  Terry broke into a happy grin. ‘That’s a nice story.’ He looked in awe at the fragile little box in his large and clumsy hands. ‘It’s a nice box.’