The Bluebird Café

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘We’d never be able to afford it. And I’d feel silly asking my parents if they’d pay for me to dress up as a cake. They thought they got me off their hands when I was eighteen.’

  ‘I would quite like to get married though.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘Who said “Every woman looks like a bride in her slip”?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘E. M. Forster? Diana Vreeland?’

  ‘That’s “Pink is the navy blue of India”, isn’t it?’ said Lucy.

  ‘Was it the Duchess of Windsor? We’ll just have to wear our petticoats anyway,’ said Abigail, and they smiled at each other in the mirror.

  ‘Mine’s black tactel.’

  ‘The very thing.’

  Chapter 25

  John Vir’s passion for Lucy was growing. He wanted to hold her tightly. He wanted to smooth that dark wing of hair back from her forehead. He wanted to run away with her, to run away from Gurpal and the boys, and his brother, the whole lot of them, the tick book and the van’s dodgy suspension, the students buying frozen spinach to make vegetarian lasagne, when he had great fresh stuff, wilting by the box load, and braying at each other across the shop as though he and the family couldn’t understand, the past-it fruit, and that tin of Tibet sandalwood talc that accused him and condemned him from its rusty island in the bathroom cabinet.

  He wanted to start again with Lucy. They would have to go away somewhere. He longed for her. His longing nagged at him like toothache, like a wisdom tooth trying to break through. He thought that she must like him a bit … when they’d been to the Cash and Carry together … oh. But she was all tied up in that café. There was nothing for it. He would have to kill Paul.

  He sat behind the shop counter and made a plan. He would push Paul into the freezer room and leave him there, then chuck him in the river when he was frozen. It would be so easy. He’d just wait until the next time Paul came in. He’d say: ‘How are you, Paul? Have you seen these beans we have in?’ He’d have them by the freezer door. When Paul bent to look at them he’d just shove him in and bolt the door. Nobody would hear him scream. Easy.

  It was the perfect plan, until he realised that he’d got the idea from an episode of The Bill where some Indian brothers had burned the body of a rival in a tandoori oven. He’d be the prime suspect. He’d have to think again.

  Meanwhile, he could try to see more of Lucy. The trips to the Cash and Carry could become regular. Perhaps she would come with him each time he went. He decided to ask.

  ‘Lucy,’ he said, when she came in the next morning for her paper. ‘Lucy, perhaps you would like some more things from the Cash and Carry soon?’

  ‘Oh, when are you going?’

  ‘In the next few days.’

  ‘We do need some things – rice, nuts, you know. If it wouldn’t be any trouble.’

  ‘Shall we go on Thursday then? About four o’clock?’

  ‘Great,’ said Lucy. Why was she blushing? Why was her hand shaking? On her way out she tripped on a pile of unsold Newses.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘I’m clumsy.’ He rushed from behind the counter to help her up and knocked over a plastic tub of Rainbow Drops. It rolled off the counter and a confetti of the magic chocolate discs landed on her shoes and around her feet.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, ‘but you look good enough to eat.’ They piled the Rainbow Drops back into the pot. Lucy realised later that he was still intending to sell them, dust and all, to the crowds of children who arrived in the shop less than sixty seconds after the infants school kicked out.

  When Lucy got back to the Bluebird, Abigail was slicing aubergines for a terrine they had planned for the evening – layers of fried aubergine with roasted peppers, basil and a cheesy mousse.

  Lucy noticed a Rainbow Drop stuck to her sleeve. She prised it off and popped it into her mouth. Hundreds and thousands grazed her tongue and the roof of her mouth.

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Paul later that evening. ‘You keep saying that you could do with some really good saucepans. Do you think that we should get married?’

  Lucy’s mouth fell open like a cartoon character’s.

  ‘What, us?’

  ‘Well, we do love each other. We could have the reception here,’ said Paul, as if that was an added bonus that would persuade her.

  ‘And Gilbert could be the toastmaster. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, perhaps not,’ said Paul. ‘It was just a thought.’

  ‘I’m going to the Cash and Carry with John Vir on Thursday,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Would you help make a list?’

  Chapter 26

  Lucy felt as though she was turning into someone else’s mother; developing strong brawny arms from lifting pans, and mixing and kneading. Postcards arrived from friends travelling in Mexico and Cuba, or working in Australia, or worst of all from former best friends who were working in London. Purple ink from Tessa at drama school. ‘Course hard but am getting very THIN and playing Ophelia next month. Why don’t you ever come up? Having a lovely time. Wish you were here.’

  ‘Do you?’ thought Lucy. ‘I haven’t got your phone number.’

  ‘I feel isolated,’ she told Paul.

  ‘What from?’

  ‘Life.’

  ‘Mmm … I don’t think your beans are sprouting.’

  The bean sprouter, an expensive plastic box, wasn’t working. Bean sprouts had started to disgust her. Sliced celery looked like maggots. She avoided organic produce now, too many insects to save or kill. Would irradiation kill them? Or make them grow bigger perhaps? They’d hatch in the oven and crawl out of pies and pastries; armies, legions of insects with plastic indestructible bodies and cellophane wings.

  ‘Oh, bean sprouts. What care I for bean sprouts?’ said Lucy. But Paul had wandered away.

  * * *

  The next time Lucy saw John Vir he looked somehow different.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked, trying to see what the difference was.

  ‘Fine, thank you, Lucy,’ he said. ‘My sister, Shreela, is staying. She’s a very good cook.’

  He looked different because he looked fatter, heavier, but, to Lucy, in a good way, not flabby, more weighty.

  ‘Look.’ (Why was she smiling at him like that?) ‘Why don’t you and your boyfriend come for dinner one night?’ It was an outrageous thing to ask. He didn’t ask people to dinner! He never had visitors now except family, or the children’s friends. He hadn’t even discussed it with Shreela. She’d have to help him. He’d have to get rid of the kids that night, they’d ruin it, show him up, make him look old, keep calling him ‘Dad’.

  ‘Oh, that would be lovely. When?’ (Was she sounding too keen?)

  ‘Um, Wednesday?’ (That gave him nearly a week.)

  ‘Oh, we can’t, the café … but we are closed on Sunday nights …’

  ‘Sunday then?’ he asked.

  ‘Great. I’ll just tell Paul. He won’t be doing anything unless it’s a bird-watching thing or something.’

  Every room in John Vir’s house was painted blue, sky blue, a shade that in a smaller expanse might have been nice. The floors were covered in lino in a pattern of orange bricks. There were no books. The sofa seemed cast from concrete. The younger Virs had put up some Formula One posters, and there were pictures of Ganesha the elephant god and Shiva, and a puppies calendar dating from Mrs Vir’s time. Those puppies would be at least great-great-great-great-grandparents by now. It made Lucy want to cry, ‘But all it needs is a woman’s touch!’ like Doris Day’s friend in Calamity Jane, and to quickly run up some pretty gingham curtains. They had brought a bunch of pinks for Shreela.

  ‘So, Shreela,’ said Lucy, ‘do you run a shop as well?’

  ‘I’m a barrister.’

  ‘Oh, right …’ said Paul.

  ‘Shall we eat?’ said Shreela, and she strode away on neat navy blue legs.

  The table was set for four. The young Virs
had seemingly been banished or had deserted. It looked like a real dinner party, white household candles from downstairs burned. His plan was taking shape.

  They had poppadoms, of course, with hot lime and brinjal pickle, Paul’s favourite. They were going to pig out. Shreela told them about her practice. She had often seen Cherie Booth at dinners, but they hadn’t actually met.

  John Vir was busy in the kitchen. He wrenched open cupboards, fumbled crazily amongst half-empty packets, crumpled paper napkins, greasy jars, petrified sugar, spices that had turned to dust. Not there! Not there! He slammed doors shut and skidded down the orange lino stairs to the shop. Boxes tried to trip him, bales of loo paper jostled him, a supermop bopped him on the head.

  Yes! there were a few packets there, behind the Lucky chicken noodles: MSG flavour enhancer as used in all the best restaurants and take-aways in Southampton. ‘Use Very Sparingly’ the packet told him.

  ‘Dad, how much are Kotex Superplus?’ yelled Gurpal from the front of the shop.

  ‘£1.73,’ he called over his shoulder, as he sped towards the stairs.

  ‘Do you want a little bag?’ Gurpal asked the student girl who for some reason looked close to tears.

  ‘It hardly seems worth it now,’ the girl said, as Gurpal tried to cram the packet into what was a very little bag. ‘I’d better have some paracetamol too.’

  ‘What are you doing out there?’ Shreela called.

  ‘Giving it the finishing touch,’ John Vir called back, smiling at his unintended pun.

  ‘You want some help?’

  ‘NO!’

  Two white unbreakable plates with orange borders were carried in.

  ‘Ladies first,’ he said, and placed them in front of Shreela and Lucy. A deep yellow curry on a fragrant pile of multicoloured rice. He brought in the dhal, the plate of warm chappatis, another dish of aubergine, one of okra. ‘All vegetarian tonight,’ he said. Paul’s plate had a dark green border, his own an orange one. They tucked in.

  ‘This is great,’ said Paul. ‘Just like from a take-away … that’s a compliment. I mean, it’s great.’ He drained the water jug into his now smeary glass.

  ‘Too hot for you?’ asked John Vir, a little spitefully.

  ‘No, I’m just really thirsty,’ said Paul.

  ‘Paul is one of those thirsty people, you know, always having a glass of water,’ said Lucy, but they didn’t seem to know. ‘This is really delicious,’ she went on, racking her brain for something to say.

  ‘Oh, Shreela did all the hard work,’ said John.

  ‘I love to cook,’ said Shreela. Now they should be on safe territory.

  ‘Oh, so do I!’ said Lucy, even though a vision of potato peelings in cold, muddy water, of damp, gritty yellowing spinach leaves, of the last time she had grated her thumbnail on the cheese grater loomed behind her eyes. ‘Well, sometimes I love to cook, it’s different now that I do it for a living, and a not very good living …’ Paul looked a bit surprised and hurt at this.

  ‘Could I possibly have some more water?’ he said.

  A red fist was biffing the back of his skull. His heart raced. He was sweaty and freezing and boiling. He lurched into the bathroom and made it just in time. He managed to run his face under the cold tap, gulped mouthfuls, gallons of water. It was 2 a.m. He wished for death.

  At 7.15 Lucy and Fennel discovered Paul on the bathroom floor, lying under a towel. His head was resting peacefully on the scales and weighed one and a half stone. Fennel licked his salty face and headbutted him. Lucy knelt down and put her hand on his cheek.

  ‘I think you’d be more comfortable in bed,’ she said.

  All he could say was: ‘Gnu.’

  She went to the all-night garage, Vir’s being out of the question, and bought milk of magnesia, Tums in five fruit flavours, some Alka-Seltzer and a packet of Clorets for them to share.

  ‘There,’ she said, tipping her haul on to the bed. ‘Which would you like first?’

  ‘Alka-Seltzer,’ said Paul, ‘and tea?’

  ‘It can’t be anything you ate,’ Lucy told him, a note of impatience in her voice. ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

  ‘I’m not being ill on purpose,’ he told her hostile back as she stomped away to make the tea. She brought him the tea in his favourite yellow mug, not considering how like the colour of cauliflower curry it was, and a piece of dry toast. Her own fat wedge was smeary with butter and Marmite.

  ‘I do feel a bit funny too,’ said Lucy. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t open today, we might poison the customers.’ She knew it was the thin end of the wedge, the first step on the slope of only opening when she felt like it, but she didn’t care.

  John Vir heard sirens in the night. They called to him through the darkness, luring him to the window. He leaned out and craned his neck to see where they were. There were lights on at the Bluebird Café, but no ambulance arrived. ‘Damn,’ he said, and cracked the back of his head on the window frame. A fox was tearing open the bin bags and strewing garbage across the pavement outside the shop. Its coat glowed double orange under the street lights. Leftover catfood and stale samosas made for sleek, fit foxes. John Vir wondered whether it preferred the meat ones or the veggie ones. Meat probably; they were spicier.

  Paul’s attack of food, poisoning lasted for two days. It left him paler and thinner.

  ‘My belt’s on the third notch,’ he told Lucy for the fifth time. Lucy wished she’d had it. She thought that she ought to lose half a stone. She’d been thinking that since she was nineteen.

  Paul refused to go into Vir and Vir for a week, too embarrassed to say thank you for the meal that he thought had nearly killed him. Lucy went round with a bunch of anemones for Shreela, but she was too late. Shreela had gone back to London.

  ‘Oh, you keep them,’ she told John Vir. ‘I can’t take them away again.’

  ‘Get a vase or something, Gurpal.’ He jabbed at his daughter with the flowers. Gurpal came back a few minutes later with an empty Hoist curry powder tin and plonked the arrangement on the shelf behind the till, in front of the Rizlas and the Red Band. Lucy knew that a bunch of desiccated stalks would mock her for ever.

  John Vir knew that something must have happened to Paul. Nobody could eat that much MSG and not be ill. For a while he hoped that Paul might have died and Lucy not have realised or bothered to do anything about it. Then he spotted Paul cycling past. It seemed that he’d have to think of something else. He started to make a list on the bottom of his Cash and Carry one.

  1. Run him over with the van.

  2. Different poisoning.

  3. Push him off a train or a cliff.

  4. Fight in a pub.

  5. Bribe him to leave.

  It occurred to him that perhaps he didn’t have to get rid of Paul; perhaps he could come between them, lure her away, get her out of that café and into his arms. Gurpal plonked herself down on the counter.

  ‘Fat chance,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Dad, can I have 50p?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just no.’

  ‘What’d’ya bother having me for if you won’t even give me 50p?’

  Perhaps she’d like to go and visit her mother. Without noticing what he was doing he punched the Cash button. Gurpal’s hand shot forward to grab a few coins.

  Chapter 27

  Summer was good for business. Despite Gilbert’s continual presence the Bluebird was flourishing. The tables were sometimes full, and they were making a bit more of a profit. They bought another freezer and began to sell ice creams through the window. Lucy found the supplier with the prettiest of flavours and chocolate-lined cornets, New Forest Ice Cream. They wished that the pavements were wider so that they could put some tables outside. Teague kept pointing out that they were selling ice creams on one of the oldest roads in Wessex. It had been a Roman road, and a Saxon one too. Lucy needed more help. Paul was being elusive, in demand at t
he Badger Centre, covering for the centre manager who had now moved to East Anglia, having been off sick for a month with a suspected slipped disc, probably caused by trying to move the beehive all by herself. Abigail was at a crucial stage, so she said, with her research. Lucy made a notice on some cardboard, cut in the shape of a fat pigeonish bluebird. PART-TIME GENERAL ASSISTANT AND ICE-CREAM SALESPERSON REQUIRED. APPLY WITHIN.

  But the first applicant was already inside and had watched the notice go up.

  ‘Is that a new notice, Paul?’

  ‘Er, yes, Gilbert.’

  ‘For some more artists to bring their pictures in for you to put up?’

  He read the ad to Gilbert. He had noticed that Gilbert was a bit hazy around words.

  ‘Paul,’ said Gilbert, ‘I can certainly help you out some more. I’d like to work for you some more. Would I be good enough for the job?’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to ask Lucy. I’m not sure what she’s looking for, the hours might be wrong for you, it is her café, she’s the boss of it …’ He put the notice up in the window and strolled nonchalantly into the kitchen, where out of sight, he knelt on the floor and banged his head again and again against the chiller. Lucy came in carrying an ice-cream scoop.

  ‘Mr Heathcliff, I presume,’ she said, then knelt beside him and cradled his head in her arms so that he had to stop. Paul looked up at her. She was flooded with love. He reminded her of Fennel.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ She hardly ever asked him that.

  ‘Gilbert wants the job.’

  ‘No way,’ said Lucy. ‘Just no way. Absolutely not.’

  They told Gilbert that he’d have to wait – it was only fair – someone unemployed might need the job, someone with children or animals to support. Gilbert said that he’d wait and see. He made sure that he wiped the tables extra thoroughly. He brought Lucy his collection of Shippam’s Fish Paste jars (with labels) for extra vases. He brought What to Look for in Autumn and Keeping Finches for Paul to read. Paul put them in a carrier bag under the counter. The question of employment for Gilbert was put on ice. They were waiting for more applicants. But no more applicants came.