Vinegar Soup

by Miles Gibson

  ‘And we’ll buy Veronica a long frock with plenty of lace on the sleeves,’ murmured Gilbert.

  ‘What does Olive think of this idea?’ asked Veronica suspiciously.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gilbert. He looked surprised. ‘I haven’t mentioned it to Olive.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve only just thought of it,’ shrugged Gilbert. A paper lantern fell from the ceiling and hit the floor in a plume of dust.

  Veronica sighed and walked away.

  ‘Are you really going to leave?’ whispered Frank, later, as he met her at the bathroom door. She smelt of toothpaste and talcum powder but she was still wearing her overcoat.

  ‘I’m twenty-five years old, Frank. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life squeezing hamburgers.’

  ‘But where will you go?’ he demanded anxiously.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She pulled at her collar and looked away.

  ‘But remember what they said at Christmas,’ he whispered urgently. ‘In a few years – when Gilbert wants to slow down and take it easy – we can run the place for ourselves. It could be different. We could turn it into a proper restaurant…’ He stared up and down the gloomy corridor, searching the walls for a glimmer of hope.

  ‘Look, Frank, when I was a kid I wanted to be a man. That was my ambition. It may sound crazy but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I started to grow. I couldn’t stop growing. So I decided, if I had to be a woman, I wanted to be a beauty queen. Why fight it? I wanted to walk around in a silk sash that said First Prize and a stupid grin on my face. So I did exercises. I prayed. I bought a Mark Eden bust developer. I stopped growing. Next I wanted to be a dancer. I broke a leg. I wanted to be a hairdresser. I broke out in rashes. After that I just wanted to be married with a lot of little noses to wipe. Nobody ever made me an offer.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ whispered Frank, frowning and rubbing his ear.

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that I never wanted to be a waitress. I wanted to be a lot of things but I never wanted to be a waitress. Nobody wants to be a waitress.’

  ‘But things could be different,’ he said desperately. He didn’t understand. He had never wanted anything but the Hercules Cafe. Life was food and smoke and steam. He shuffled in his slippers and glared at the floor.

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like Gilbert,’ hissed Veronica and swept past him to the safety of her room.

  That night Frank lay awake in his bed and stared through the window at the flying, grey snow. His world, the cafe, that had once seemed so strong and buoyant, now felt shallow and dangerously small. What would happen when Olive and Gilbert were gone? How would he manage without Veronica?

  He could take to the road as Gilbert had done so many years ago, pockets full of biscuits and a frying pan strapped to his back. But Gilbert had walked with a man called Sam Pilchard. The man who drank bleach and swallowed raw kidneys. The man with a razor concealed in his boot. How could he hope to manage alone? Run away with Veronica. She wouldn’t want him. Old enough to be his mother. Nobody wants to be a waitress. One day she’ll pick up her satchel and vanish. No. Impossible. Nothing must change.

  At six o’clock he dressed and stumbled downstairs to warm the kitchen for Gilbert. The air was so cold it hurt his teeth. His breath feathered against his face like a damp and milky ectoplasm. He shivered and kicked at the kitchen door. When he switched on the light he found Olive. She was slumped against the great blue stove. She wore her Christmas dressing gown. The cord was twisted on the floor. Her head was floating in a pan of meat soup.

  9

  It was the end of the Hercules Cafe. Gilbert drew the curtains and Veronica cancelled the milk. The doctor and later the hospital said that Olive had collapsed and drowned in the soup. But why she had struggled from her bed to meet death in an empty kitchen at five o’clock in the morning would always remain a mystery. She had slipped away in a dream, tiptoed past Gilbert helpless and snoring, along the dark corridor and down the stairs to an early grave.

  Frank was sick with shock. He tried to hide himself away and refused any offers of comfort. He had stared death in the face and nothing could ever be the same again. In taking Olive, death had found him and entered his name on the waiting list.

  Gilbert was lost. He carried his grief about the house, endlessly walking from room to room as if Olive might be found again.

  Veronica was silent. She cooked meals that no one touched, blew her nose into paper towels and spent long hours scrubbing the kitchen floor with buckets of hot disinfectant.

  Olive was calm. The hospital pulled out her stomach, rinsed it, dropped it into a dish and passed it among twenty young medical students. Three of them fainted. The others were sent home to write about it. At the end of the day she was quickly repacked and sent, on Gilbert’s instructions, to the funeral parlour of Freddie Farouk. He had found the name in the Yellow Pages. Freddie Farouk your Friend in Grief. A Gift of Flowers in our Chapel of Rest.

  The day of the funeral the snow melted and all the drains were singing. Frank and Veronica helped Gilbert into a borrowed black suit and led him into the sunlight. Horace the barber closed his shop. The street turned out to watch the procession. At eleven o’clock in the morning, after three verses of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and a quickly mumbled prayer, Olive, locked in a plywood box, was sunk to rest in the London clay.

  Gilbert took to his bed. The room dark. The sheets pulled over his head. So lonely to be left alone. Olive gone. Stubborn to her last bad breath. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Stick out your thumb and that makes fifty. A lifetime counted on your fingers. It’s nothing. No time. She was too slow. The world spins so fast. God! It’s cold. The silence. Terrible. What’s left? There’s Frank. What will happen to Frank? He’s young. He’ll forget. Learn to live without. Funny. All those years I dreamed of leaving. Tomorrow. When I wake up there’s nothing to stop me. What? Nothing to stop me. What? Nothing to stop.

  * * *

  The snow retreated and the rain arrived. A curtain of cold Atlantic rain that danced and crackled in the narrow street. It hammered loose the slates on the roof, bent the gutters and washed into chimneys, clipping clots of wet soot that fell, smacking to the grates beneath. It rained for three days and nights and Gilbert never stirred from his bed.

  ‘When are you leaving?’ asked Frank on the morning of the fourth day as he pushed through the chairs in the empty dining room.

  ‘Why?’ said Veronica. She was slouched at a table, dressed in her long army greatcoat, watching a mug of coffee steam.

  Frank shrugged. ‘I thought you’d be anxious to get away now that the cafe is closed.’ He kicked out a chair and sat down at a separate table.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I can’t go now. You’ll need me around for a while,’ she sighed and contrived to look disappointed.

  Frank stared at the window. Overnight, someone passing in the street had sprayed:

  SIGGY IS A TOSSER

  on the glass in aerosol paint. The words wept long, thin tears. ‘Do you think we’ll open again?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Ask Gilbert,’ said Veronica. She jerked her head towards the ceiling.

  Frank frowned and pressed his fingertips along the table edge. ‘I don’t know what to say – I don’t want to disturb him.’

  ‘He’ll understand – he’s your father,’ said Veronica. She raised the mug to her face and closed her eyes against the steam.

  ‘No, I don’t think he’s my father,’ said Frank.

  Veronica opened her eyes. ‘And Olive?’

  ‘I don’t think she was my mother,’ Frank confessed.

  ‘You mean they actually found you under a table?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frank. He looked surprised. ‘I told you.’ He pointed a finger. ‘That one.’

  Veronica whistled. She tilted the mug against her mouth and began a little pecking motion, sip, swallow, sip, swallow, while she stared at Frank. ‘So where are your parents?’
r />   ‘I don’t know,’ grunted Frank.

  Veronica looked exasperated. ‘Don’t you care? Don’t you want to know where you came from and what happened and why they couldn’t keep you and where they are now and if they still think about you sometimes and if they want to see you again and everything?’

  ‘No,’ said Frank.

  ‘That’s horrible, Frank. Absolutely horrible.’

  ‘Why?’

  Veronica glared at him. ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.

  ‘What about your family?’ demanded Frank.

  ‘That’s different, I hate mine. I never want to see ’em again. But at least I know where they live and what’s happening to ’em.’

  ‘This is my family,’ Frank said doubtfully, waving his arm at the empty room.

  ‘Are you going to ask him?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s been sitting in bed with a blanket over his head for nearly a week. We’ve got to talk to him, Frank. We can’t live on fresh air.’

  ‘Has he eaten anything?’

  ‘I cut him sandwiches every morning and put them outside the door. He writes notes and leaves them on the empty plates. Yesterday he wanted a pineapple.’

  ‘Do we have any pineapples?’

  ‘We don’t have anything.’

  ‘He’ll come down when he’s ready. It takes time.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But if you can’t talk to him I’ll have to do it for you.’

  ‘Tomorrow, said Frank wearily.

  But the next day Gilbert was back in the kitchen, flames in his frying pan, hands glazed and dripping with fat.

  ‘What’s cooking?’ sniffed Frank as he came through the door.

  ‘Liver and bacon,’ said Gilbert cheerfully. ‘Want some?’

  ‘No,’ said Frank.

  ‘The bacon’s bad but there’s plenty of liver,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘I’ll have some toast,’ said Frank. He yawned and scratched his head.

  ‘There’s no butter,’ said Gilbert. He emptied the frying pan on to a plate and sat down at the table. When Veronica arrived he waved his fork and smiled.

  ‘Are we going to open today?’ she asked hopefully, glancing at Frank.

  ‘Liver and bacon,’ said Gilbert.

  Veronica stared at his plate. The bacon glowed with a queer phosphorescence. The liver resembled a knob of charred wood. Gilbert stabbed it with his fork and made the wood bleed. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll just have coffee.’

  ‘There’s no milk,’ warned Gilbert.

  ‘You told me to cancel it,’ said Veronica.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Have some orange juice,’ said Frank, peering into the fridge.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a gallon of the stuff in here.’ He poured some into a mug and offered it to Veronica who drank, frowned and wrinkled her nose.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Gilbert. ‘We can’t stay here for the rest of our lives, like toads under some damn stone. We’re getting out while there’s still time. There are places out there you can’t imagine. There are places out there you can’t even pronounce. Wonderful places. Wild places. You’re too young to hide yourselves away. And I’m too old.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it here?’ said Frank.

  ‘It’s not healthy now Olive is gone. If you stay you’ll end up with your head in a saucepan. Is that what you want to happen? Do you want to spend the rest of your life trailing up and down here, up and down, day after day, with Olive’s old apron tied round your neck?’

  Frank found that, under the circumstances, he couldn’t confess to such aspirations but, yes, he would be happy to spend his life in the warm fog of this kitchen with Gilbert shouting, Veronica swearing and the world demanding nothing from them but hamburgers and doughnuts.

  ‘No,’ said Gilbert. ‘It’s finished. We should be out in the world.’ He folded a slice of bread in his fingers and used it to wipe his plate clean.

  ‘It’s raining,’ said Veronica.

  ‘We’ll get wet,’ said Gilbert. ‘I’m selling the Hercules Cafe.’ He pushed the bread into his mouth and sucked his thumb.

  ‘How are we going to eat?’ demanded Frank.

  ‘Do you remember Sam Pilchard?’

  Frank nodded. He had known Sam Pilchard as long as he could remember. He had grown up with Sam Pilchard stories. The name had become as familiar to him as Ali Baba and Rumpelstiltskin. ‘The man who ate dogs,’ he said. ‘You worked with him in Africa.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gilbert. He paused to belch and wipe his chin. ‘Well, I found his address and wrote to him. He’s still out there. He runs an hotel in Bilharzia. It’s a big place, fifty bedrooms, fancy restaurant, night clubs, you wouldn’t believe it. He says it needs a few repairs but that’s nothing. The climate does horrible things to the timber. It’s the heat. Anyway, he wants me to join him. He wants all of us to join him.’

  ‘How long have you known?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘Some time,’ said Gilbert. ‘I didn’t tell Olive because she hated abroad. Now… we could sell everything and go tomorrow.’

  ‘What sort of hotel?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Here,’ said Gilbert. ‘He sent me a picture of the place. It’s not very good but it gives you an idea.’

  He pulled an envelope from his trouser pocket, flicked it open and pulled out a dog-eared photograph. He glanced at it lovingly for a moment and then placed it on the table.

  Veronica stared. She saw a length of breeze-block wall cut by a tiny Moorish window. Crates and bottles and canvas sacks had been piled against the wall. Above the wall ran a stripe of blue sky. ‘It looks like a cattle shed,’ she concluded scornfully. ‘It looks like a cattle shed with fancy windows.’

  ‘That’s the local architecture,’ explained Gilbert patiently.

  Veronica bent closer to the table. ‘There’s a nig-nog,’ she said with renewed interest.

  ‘Where?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘There.’

  ‘That’s not a nig-nog,’ said Gilbert. ‘That’s Sam.’

  Frank picked up the photograph and held it to the light, as if he suspected a counterfeit bank note. The nursery rhyme giant, the man who ate dogs and beetles and babies, the man who could shrug off flames and shave with broken glass, looked improbably shrivelled and old.

  ‘And he wants us to go out there and work for him?’ said Veronica.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘What sort of food do they serve?’ asked Frank.

  Gilbert grinned. ‘Lobsters,’ he said, licking his lips. ‘And tiny shrimps the size of eyebrows. Swordfish. Fat fish the colour of rainbows. Yams. Peppers. Sweet potatoes. Egg-plants. Greens. Giant tomatoes. And the fruit! Pineapples. Bananas. Mangoes. Pawpaws. Coconuts. Pomegranates. Everything grows. You’ll be amazed.’

  Veronica snorted. ‘When was the last time you saw this character?’ she demanded.

  Gilbert gave her a brief account of his days at the Coronation Hotel, the march across Morocco and life aboard the Congo riverboats. But he saw that Veronica wasn’t impressed.

  ‘It’s probably changed,’ she objected. ‘You’ll feel like a stranger.’

  ‘Everything changes,’ said Gilbert. ‘But we can learn. We can start again.’

  Frank remembered Olive. Yes. Everything changes but everything remains the same. There’s no end to the suffering. ‘They’re starving in Africa,’ he said.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Gilbert. ‘But they’re also living from the fat of the land. It’s big, Africa. North to south it’s as far as London is from Bombay. You could drop the entire United States of America into the Sahara Desert and make it disappear. They’re not all starving or fighting or running around in stove-pipe hats with bones through their noses.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Veronica. ‘There’s a famine in Ethiopia, I saw it on television. They’re trying to raise money to send ’em food.’

  ‘That’s because they
grow sand in Ethiopia,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘It’s drought,’ said Frank.

  Gilbert shrugged. ‘They cut down the trees, suck all the goodness from the land and let the soil blow away like dust. They’re growing sand. It’s their biggest crop.’

  ‘How can you talk like that when millions of ’em are starving to death?’ said Veronica.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ said Gilbert mildly. ‘They’re digging themselves a graveyard. It was happening thirty years ago. You can’t stop ’em.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ Veronica snapped.

  ‘I’m not taking you into the desert,’ insisted Gilbert. ‘We’re going to the forest.’

  ‘What happens if something goes wrong?’ said Frank.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, if we don’t like it,’ squirmed Frank.

  ‘We’ll come home again.’

  ‘But you’re going to sell it,’ said Veronica.

  ‘We’ll make another home. It’s not the end of the world. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’

  ‘He’s mad!’ said Veronica, turning to Frank.

  ‘It’s an idea,’ said Frank.

  ‘A mad idea,’ snapped Veronica.

  While Frank and Veronica argued Gilbert wrote himself a shopping list, milk, bread, bacon, butter, wrapped his head in the News of the World and went off into the rain towards the Greek grocer.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Veronica, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe it’s happening. He’s gone crazy.’

  Frank stood and stared at the rain through the dining room window. Someone had sprayed

  SIGGY IS A TOSSER

  on the glass in soft black paint. ‘I’d like to see Africa,’ he said wistfully.

  ‘It’s not that easy, Frank. You can’t just wander through the world with a grin on your face and a slice of cake in your pocket. Everywhere you go you need passports and permits and permission just to blow your nose.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Gilbert will find a way.’

  ‘He’ll find a way to get thrown into prison,’ said Veronica pessimistically. ‘And if we don’t starve to death or die of some revolting disease, you’ll be murdered and I’ll be raped in my shoes.’