Vinegar Soup

by Miles Gibson

  Olive sniffed and shook her head. ‘I think he’s gone,’ she whispered, wiping her nose with a length of lavatory paper.

  ‘It’s not the first time he’s stayed out all night,’ said Frank. He wondered if he should wake Veronica.

  ‘That was years ago,’ snuffled Olive. ‘And that was different.’

  ‘He came home,’ insisted Frank.

  ‘Last time he didn’t have one of his blasted old cronies to take him boozing,’ argued Olive.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ said Frank. ‘Drunks look after their own.’

  ‘I didn’t like the look of him. You can’t trust that sort. Crafty. Did you see what he did to Veronica?’

  Frank shook his head. She gasped and closed her eyes as the stranger pulled her to the floor. Her small but perfect rose tipped breasts poked proudly through the gash he had torn in her shirt.

  ‘Anything could have happened – he might have done himself a mischief,’ moaned Olive.

  ‘He’s indestructible,’ smiled Frank.

  Olive shuddered. He’s old and fat and full of beer. ‘I think we should ring the hospital,’ she whispered. Heart attack at his age and there’s no hope when you fall down in the street because policemen laughing think you’re drunk as you lie there twitching your arms and legs until the ambulance arrives too late and then they send for you to take away the clothes shoes count the money in the pockets sign here sign there go home hold out your hand while the doctor gives you something to sleep and the shock alone enough to kill you.

  ‘Wait for another few hours – it’s almost morning – he’ll come home when he wants his breakfast,’ said Frank.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Olive doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frank.

  ‘He’ll come home with his head full of fancy ideas, that’s the trouble. He’ll want to buy a camel and become an Arab or some silly nonsense like that. I need him, Frank. And I need you.’

  ‘I know,’ whispered Frank. He reached out and took her hand. It felt small and brittle through the worn-out glove.

  ‘He saved this cafe,’ said Olive. ‘It was a struggle in the early days.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Frank. He thought of the pitted metal counter and the gravy-coloured walls.

  ‘No,’ said Olive. ‘I’m talking about the days before you were born. We lived from hand to mouth. You can’t imagine.’

  ‘You both worked hard.’

  ‘It was Gilbert who knew the business.’

  ‘But he couldn’t have done it without you,’ insisted Frank. He stared at the sleeves of her dressing gown. The cuffs were stained and badly scorched. A seam that had opened was silted with toast crumbs.

  ‘Gilbert did everything.’

  ‘He loves you,’ said Frank.

  Olive wiped the lavatory paper over her face. ‘He’s never satisfied,’ she sniffed. ‘He gets restless. He thinks he’s missing something. He’s always talking about life as if it were a sort of journey. It’s not. He thinks it leads somewhere. It doesn’t. You’d think he’d be happy to have four square meals a day and a roof over his head. There’s enough misery in the world without going out to look for it.’

  Frank might have wondered how Olive knew of this misery since her view of the world was no bigger than the cafe window but he didn’t question the truth of it. She saw each cracked egg, every slice of bread gone stale, as a tragedy: overwhelming evidence of a cruel and hostile world. And Frank had learned to accept this jaundiced view as easily as he accepted Gilbert’s dreams of a lost paradise. The real world lay somewhere between them: simple, solid and safe. Gilbert would be home for breakfast. Gilbert would come home for breakfast because it was impossible to imagine anything else.

  ‘He’ll come home,’ he said and trod the Wobble women under his feet.

  * * *

  Fried eggs with black lace skirts skating on cracked china plates. Bitter coffee belching bubbles. Blistered bacon. Wrinkled mushrooms. Grilled tomatoes oozing seed.

  ‘Open the ovens,’ cried Olive.

  ‘Open the windows,’ bawled Frank.

  The kitchen smoked and the windows flapped until the whole street was wrapped in the fragrant smoke. Gilbert came through the door as the first slices of bread jumped from the toaster.

  ‘I can smell breakfast,’ he said cheerfully.

  He sat down at the kitchen table, closed his eyes and sighed. He reeked of stale beer and he needed a shave, but he didn’t look too bad. There was a broken packet of biscuits wedged inside a jacket pocket.

  ‘I went for a drink,’ he said, grinning at Olive.

  ‘We can smell it,’ she snapped, scooped a breakfast from the oven and dropped it carelessly onto the table.

  ‘It was old Parker. I haven’t seen him for years. He was a waiter at the Coronation,’ smiled Gilbert, turning to Frank.

  ‘Imagine,’ said Olive, slamming the oven door.

  ‘I thought he was dead,’ sighed Gilbert, wiping his fork on his sleeve.

  ‘Life is full of surprises,’ said Olive coldly.

  Gilbert fell silent and chewed on bacon. He wanted to tell Frank about finding Sam Pilchard’s address, about the food at the Hungry Fiddler and the girls with breasts that quivered like aspic; he wanted to tell him how they had gone, afterwards, to see a conjurer in a silk top hat who swallowed swords and breathed fire and the noise and the crowds and the wine that smelt like turpentine, he wanted to tell Frank about all the dirty alleys and hell holes, the miracles of life and the gutters full of stars; but he glanced at Olive and bit his tongue.

  ‘Where did you leave him?’ said Frank, pouring himself a mug of coffee.

  ‘Chinatown. He had to see a man about a boat.’

  Tou said he was a waiter,’ said Olive.

  ‘Yes, but that was years ago,’ Gilbert explained. ‘These days he’s a real businessman. Fingers in all sorts of pies.’

  ‘Hands everywhere,’ said Veronica. She was leaning against the door, arms folded, legs apart, her face a mask of sarcasm.

  ‘He had a lot of interesting ideas,’ Gilbert said quietly. He began to feel tired and depressed. The exhilaration he had felt at walking home through the city at daybreak, the beauty of empty streets, the buildings washed in the clean, cold light, the optimism of dawn, the energy he had gathered, leaked away. The kitchen was hot. The food turned to acid in his stomach. He wiped his face with his hands.

  ‘What sort of ideas?’ said Frank, to encourage him.

  ‘The Hercules Hamburger Chain,’ he said at last, leaning back and picking his teeth with a matchstick.

  ‘What?’ grunted Olive. She was down on her hands and knees, counting eggs at the bottom of the fridge. She turned to look up at him. Her hair was touched with frost.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert. ‘I’ve been thinking about it and we need to expand. A string of cafes to stretch across London. Pancakes and milk shakes. Free balloons. Proper uniforms. Imagine it!’

  ‘It’s all nonsense!’ barked Olive. She stood up and kicked the fridge closed. She was clutching an egg in her fist.

  ‘You’ve got to keep moving to change with the times,’ said Gilbert stubbornly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s progress,’ declared Gilbert. ‘You work to make things better.’

  ‘But things don’t get better,’ said Olive. ‘They change but they don’t get better.’

  ‘Here?’ frowned Gilbert, looking around.

  ‘Anywhere,’ said Olive, waving at the world.

  ‘Five hundred years ago you died of toothache,’ growled Gilbert, pulling the matchstick from his mouth. ‘That’s progress.’

  ‘These days you die of the heartache. Toothache. Heartache. What’s the difference? There’s no end to suffering.’

  ‘The Hercules Hamburger Chain will help people to suffer in comfort,’ said Gilbert, winking at Frank. ‘We’ll make simple food for the common man.’

  ‘We don’t have the money,’ objected Frank.

  ‘That�
��s easy,’ said Gilbert. ‘The banks are full of money.’

  ‘And you’re full of baloney,’ snapped Olive. ‘We’ll be paupers. You’ll borrow money we can’t afford and we’ll have to sell the furniture.’

  ‘You have to take a few risks,’ admitted Gilbert. He stretched and arched his spine. A dull pain began to clot in his neck.

  ‘I don’t want to take risks! You’re always looking for trouble!’ shouted Olive. The anxiety and confusion of the night erupted now in a spurt of anger. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she screamed. She raised her arm and threw the bomb at his head.

  The egg broke above Gilbert’s left eye. He cried out in surprise and twisted away. The shell slipped from his face on a snail’s trail of slime and puddled his shoulder. He touched his eye with his fingertips and turned to Olive, his mouth open, the eye socket full of translucent jelly.

  ‘The next time you go out drinking don’t bother to come back,’ she sobbed and fled from the kitchen.

  There was silence. Gilbert hung his head and stared at his plate. A long string of egg yolk swung from his nose.

  8

  Despite Olive’s gloom, at Christmas they felt prosperous enough to close the cafe for a week. Gilbert bought a tree and planted it in the dining room. Frank hung the walls with bunches of holly and looped paper lanterns from the ceiling.

  On Christmas Day Gilbert cooked a special dinner. He was in the kitchen before first light, cutting swedes and scrubbing parsnips, his slippers covered in potato peel. For hours there was nothing but steam and the blue smoke of bacon but early in the afternoon the house had filled to the rafters with the smell of roast turkey.

  Frank laid the table and trimmed it with enough tinsel and ribbons to decorate a wedding feast. He sported a wristwatch with a crocodile strap and felt obliged to pause at intervals to read the time or polish the glass against his sleeve. Veronica, wearing a necklace of mistletoe, helped Gilbert serve the food. Olive, wrapped in a new dressing gown and wearing a Christmas cracker crown, sat at the top of the table, surrounded by her adopted family. They ate and drank and laughed and stripped the bird to its skeleton.

  ‘I stuffed the turkey with its own guts and giblets,’ Gilbert announced proudly. He forced a spoon into the carcass and drew out a pile of soft, black worms. ‘Here, Frank, they’re full of nourishment,’ he said as he emptied the spoon on Frank’s plate.

  ‘Veronica?’ He pushed the spoon back into the turkey and gave it a twist.

  ‘No thanks. I don’t like ’em.’

  ‘Giblets?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Gilbert looked astonished. He stared at Veronica. He stared at the spoon. ‘Have you ever tried them?’

  ‘I don’t like the look of ’em,’ said Veronica.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing. Try everything in life at least once,’ said Gilbert, flicking the worms on to his own plate. ‘Except suicide and grapefruit,’ he added quietly, licking the spoon.

  Afterwards there was a Christmas pudding, fat as a Turk’s head, shimmering in a halo of brandy flames.

  ‘I’ve eaten so much I’m fit to bust,’ said Olive. She belched, blushed, and began to laugh. And, because Olive laughed, Gilbert threw back his head and he began to laugh, and so Frank laughed because Gilbert laughed and next Veronica laughed so that everyone laughed and then Olive began to cry. There was no warning. One moment she was beaming and the next she was bawling. She choked and dropped her fork. Her face crumpled. The paper crown fell over her ears.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ whispered Veronica, pressing a napkin into Olive’s hand.

  ‘It’s the brandy,’ said Gilbert. He sucked a tooth and stared ruefully at the broken pudding.

  Olive wiped her face and snorted into the napkin. ‘I was thinking,’ she sobbed. ‘This could be our last Christmas together.’

  ‘Why?’ said Frank. ‘What’s happening?’ He looked at Gilbert for an answer but Gilbert only shook his head.

  ‘You’re a man,’ wailed Olive.

  ‘It’s my age,’ said Frank. He looked bewildered.

  ‘You’ll want to make your own life,’ sniffed Olive. ‘What can we offer you? Nothing. You’ll get restless living here and then you’ll move away and we’ll never see you again.’

  Frank was silent. He had never imagined that, one day, he would have to leave the cafe. The prospect startled him. He saw his life as already complete. He was set in perpetual motion between kitchen and table, the days counted in soup bowls and coffee spoons. Why should anything change?

  ‘But I belong here,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want to leave.’

  There was another silence. He stared at Veronica who stared at her plate. He watched her fingers twist the mistletoe against her throat. A berry, fat as a pearl, broke from the necklace and fell between her breasts.

  ‘Frank, we’ve been thinking,’ Gilbert suddenly shouted, leaning in a dish of buttered parsnips. ‘We want you to have the cafe when we’re gone.’ He slapped his hands against the edge of the table and made the tinsel tremble. There. It was simple. He grinned and glanced at Olive for approval.

  ‘Where are you going?’ demanded Frank suspiciously.

  ‘Nowhere, you daft bugger!’ shouted Gilbert. He waved his arms hopelessly as if trying to measure the distance between heaven and hell. ‘I mean when we’re dead and gone.’

  ‘We want you to have the cafe,’ continued Olive. ‘And we’d like Veronica to stay and help to look after everything – if she wants. We’ve been thinking about it and that’s what we’d like for you.’

  ‘But you’re no age,’ protested Frank.

  Olive stared at him. He’s still a child despite all the talk and tall for his age with his heavy bones but I don’t know I think he’s started to outgrow his brains. She picked up her spoon and sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Frank. Eat your pudding.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re expecting to drop dead tomorrow,’ sulked Frank.

  ‘Any time,’ grieved Olive. ‘You’re young. You think you’re going to live for ever. You’ll learn.’

  ‘I don’t want anything to change,’ insisted Frank fiercely.

  ‘Eat your pudding,’ said Veronica. They finished the dinner in silence.

  * * *

  It was a cold January. Snow blew down from the north and settled silently over the city. Blood froze in veins. Milk froze in bottles. The city burned its lights at noon. When the snow had drifted as deep as the windows, men were seen with leather shovels cutting trenches through the streets. Babies howled and steamed like puddings. Birds fell from trees. Old ladies, wrapped in blankets, cradled their dogs and cats for warmth. As the storms lifted the sun shone cold from a bitter sky. The snow hardened as it turned grey and perished. The gutters crunched with clinker. At the Hercules Cafe customers sat in overcoats scalding their mouths with peppered pea soup. Hands cracked with frost. Feet stamped and puddled the floor. It was so cold that Olive could not leave her bed. Frank wore a vest and Gilbert tried to cook in gloves until one morning, making toast, he managed to set his fingers alight. He ran around the kitchen with flames spurting from the tips of his thumbs. Frank went to the rescue and plunged the gloves in a dish of tomatoes.

  Veronica worked the tables dressed in her army greatcoat and a pair of bright green high-heeled shoes. The coat, tightly buttoned from her ankles to her ears, gave her the look of a furtive stripper running from parlour to draughty parlour in a crowded Soho street. A man brave enough to break the buttons might find nothing beneath but little sequins sewn to the living skin. Frank made a similar suggestion and she hit him with a tray. She was too depressed and cold for games. Her teeth chattered. Her grey eyes set as hard as ice.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ she suddenly announced one evening as they were closing the cafe.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Gilbert. He was sweeping puddles on the floor. He paused for a moment and leaned on his broom.

  ‘It’s the customers,’ she complained. ‘They’re fine w
hen they first arrive but once they’ve got a pint of hot soup inside ’em they start to thaw out.’ She pulled a towel from her overcoat pocket and wrapped one end around her fist.

  ‘That’s the idea,’ grinned Gilbert.

  ‘But they stink!’ shouted Veronica. ‘Some of ’em haven’t been outside their clothes for a month.’ She raised the towel and slapped the nearest chair. Crack. The chair jumped in surprise.

  ‘Well, if s too cold for a wet flannel,’ argued Gilbert.

  ‘Wet flannel?’ she shouted. ‘You’d need a blow torch to get some of ’em clean. I swear they sleep in their clothes!’ She was so furious she began to flog the chair. Crack. Crack. The chair bounced across the room and fell down with its legs in the air. Veronica kicked it.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ said Frank gently, picking up the battered chair.

  ‘You don’t have to serve ’em,’ scowled Veronica, pulling off her shoe. She licked a finger and used it to wipe the scratched green leather.

  ‘Wait until the summer,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘They’re ripe enough for me,’ muttered Veronica. She dropped the shoe and tried to spear it with her foot.

  ‘It will be different in the summer,’ said Gilbert. ‘We’ll attract a better class of customer. I thought we might open a fancy fish restaurant. I’ll put tables outside on the pavement and big umbrellas for the shade. And we’ll serve prawn cocktails in little glass buckets. And fresh sardines when we can get them. And potted shrimps and crab salads…’ He gazed around the dining room and smiled. He saw office girls at summer tables, sunlight shining through their skirts. He saw windows open, lobsters curling, ice creams melting into rainbows.

  ‘We could serve whitebait in baskets,’ suggested Frank brightly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert. ‘And fresh grilled trout.’

  ‘Cockles and clams,’ said Frank.

  ‘Whelks and winkles,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘I could wear a straw hat and a long rubber apron,’ dreamed Frank.