‘Tell us about Rotterdam,’ said Spilkin, ‘and your triumphs as a soloist with the Philharmonic.’
Mevrouw Bonsma disengaged her long teeth with a click and patted his arm with a hand as red and square as a stevedore’s (it is with pianists as it is with surgeons and cardsharps). ‘You know very well, Spilkijn,’ – he had introduced himself thus and she seemed to think it was a diminutive – ‘that I was born and bred in Rustenburg.’ Despite all her efforts to modulate it and make it lilt, her voice hissed and crackled like an old gramophone record.
‘A lady of your accomplishments? Impossible.’
‘I am just a farm girl at heart. Sincerely, I have never even been in an aeroplane.’
‘Mevrouw!’ Pursing his lips, giving the exotic diphthong the shape of a grape, then swallowing it whole like a tickled schoolboy. If he made ‘Mevrouw Bonsma’ sound as sweet and juicy as a fruit, she made ‘Spilkin’ into an acute little instrument for winkling the stubborn flesh from its shell. Bodkin, kilderkin, cannikin, sooterkin. Was it my imagination or was there a trace of a Dutch accent like a dusting of cinnamon on her flat vowels? Perhaps she was putting it on, under suggestion.
The banter continued while she powdered her face. Pancake, she explained, for the lights. Light, actually: a sixty-watt globe in a bluebell shade, dipping its head over the keyboard. ‘Once an artiste, always an artiste. But I have no illusions, life has stripped me of them, one by one. People used to sit up and take notice when I played. Now I am ‘‘background music’’, that’s all.’ The skin of her neck had the texture of crêpe. She enamelled her lips and went bravely back to work.
‘So, what do you think?’
I had had the opportunity to examine Mevrouw Bonsma closely over the months, but I had not drawn many conclusions from the exercise. She was highly strung, but that was fitting. And she thought too much about what other people thought of her. Taking pride in one’s appearance is nothing less than good manners, but she was overly concerned with trifles. An occupational hazard, perhaps. While one of her raw-boned hands bickered away at the keys, the other was always wandering to the nape of her neck, fumbling for a label, checking whether her jersey was on the right way round. I saw that she did not have the feet of a pianist either. Her big plates of meat, tilted on the wineglass heels of slippers made of silver chain-mail, pumped the pedals, while her hands rolled over the keys, setting up a pale vibrato in the flesh of her upper arms. She looked like a navvy driving some shiny piece of earth-moving equipment. Five-letter word: spade. Or: piano. Incongruously, the music itself was a soft, insistent outpouring, like drizzle on the roof, or the tinkling of a wind-chime, to which one grows so accustomed, one only hears it when it falls silent. ‘A charming woman.’
‘You like her?’
‘Well enough.’ I did too, although we were not friends as such. There was something heroic in her efforts to be light, to keep her bulk afloat on such a thin stream of sound. Her fingertips touched the keys with exquisite delicacy, defying gravity, skipping like a flurry of raindrops across the surface of a pond, producing ever more intricate Venn diagrams of interlocking ripples.
Spilkin and I sat up straighter than usual, while she paddled through ‘Swanee River’.
‘Her name,’ Spilkin whispered, ‘is Suzanna, but I promised not to tell. She enjoys being Mevrouwed. Bit of a snob, never mind the country-girl stuff.’
Total snob, in reverse, to a degree (6). National serviceman in a boa (6). New edition of Bosman (6).
When she rolled without missing a beat into ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’, we gave her a round of applause, which found a few polite echoes at the other tables – or it may have been draughtsmen clacking over their foes. She showed us her grateful yellowed ivories.
‘Just this once’ was no more than a manner of speaking. Mevrouw Bonsma acquired a permanent place at our table. She would join us between shifts at the piano, to moisten her throat with the mug of tea or rock shandy to which her contract entitled her. She laughed voraciously at Spilkin’s jokes, as if she were crushing rusks between her molars, and left fading echoes of her laughing mouth on the rim of her teacup and the ends of her satin-tipped cigarettes.
Once had been a tolerable novelty; but being in her company constantly aggravated me. The sheer bulk of her was an imposition. When she sat down at the table, I felt myself rise momentarily in my own chair, as if the room had subsided in her vicinity. She loomed over us like a dam wall, which had seemed sturdy enough when observed from a safe distance, but appeared to be crumbling away now that we squatted, like a pair of truant schoolboys, in the damp shade at its foot. I felt as if I was on the shores of Mevrouw Bonsma. The phrase rang in my head, trying to fit itself to the tune of ‘Loch Lomond’ or ‘On Top of Old Smokey’, without success. Always, it was Rotterdam I saw. Such a watery fecundity! What if she burst? I would be washed away like a stick of balsa on a flood of evergreens. Even when she went back to the piano, the threat remained. She had elbowed her way out of the background to which she belonged, and could no longer be ignored. When she played, we had to listen. Her personal favourites bubbled along perkily, flats tumbling like little propellers, sharps concealed like lures in soft lumps of melody. The special requests, hauled up from the abysmal deeps, could be positively sodden. More than once I felt as if I was drowning.
It was impossible to discuss my fears with Spilkin. I could not be sure what he thought of Mevrouw Bonsma. He seemed to like her a great deal. But then he also treated her as if she were a fool. He thought nothing of speaking about her in the third person, while she sat nodding pleasantly, fingering the ugly beauty spot stuck like a pastille of salted licorice to the corner of her mouth.
As an act of self-preservation, to save myself from being swept away, I began to tell her about my System of Records. ‘Over my head,’ she protested, ‘Greek to me. I’m no good with words.’ But she was impressed with me, I could tell, she thought I was frightfully clever, and so I kept pressing my clippings on her and reading her extracts from the notebooks. At other times, it was lexical gymnastics, flashy routines full of pikes and rolls and tearles with a twist, moves I could execute in my sleep. ‘Medley, Mevrouw,’ I would say. ‘Heterogeneous mixture. See meddle. Meddle, busy oneself unduly. And mêlée. Same root in “mix” – from the Latin misceo.’ Then again: ‘Do you see, Mevrouw,’ I would say. ‘Wormwood. From the OE wormod, wermod, after worm, wood: cf vermouth. And vermouth. From the G. Wermut, wormwood. That’s what we call a backflip. Let me show you how it works here in the dictionary.’ And sometimes, when both of us were exhausted, I would fall back on frenzied bouts of lexical fartlek. ‘Here we are: absinth. A shrubby plant, Artemisia absinthium, or its essence. Also called “wormwood”. Hence a liqueur flavoured with wormwood. Are you still with me? Artemisia. Any of various plants, including sagebrush and wormwood, f. ME, f. L., f. G. plant sacred to Artemis. Artemis. G. Myth. The virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon. Sagebrush perhaps? f. L. salvia, the healing plant, from salvus, healthy, safe. Salvation!’ And so on. She would bite her bottom lip with her ragged incisors and gaze at me anxiously. I had the distinct impression that she admired me, an impression I had not gained from a member of the fairer sex (to stretch a point) for quite some time, and it flattered my vanity, I suppose, or what few shreds of it remained. I couldn’t help myself: I began to take pleasure in making her clap one of her big red hands to her mouth in astonishment and delight.
My behaviour was uncharacteristic; obviously, it lacked the decorum people associate with me. And it appeared to infect Spilkin too. Lapsing out of character, just as I had done, he began to tell jokes. Have you heard the one about? he was always asking. Mevrouw Bonsma, who did not have a funny bone in her body, declared that he was the wittiest man alive. Under this onslaught, shoals of old punchlines came adrift in my head and slewed about, looking for jokes to attach themselves to. Knock knock. Who’s there? Ja. Ja who? Boo. Boo who? To get to the other side. And one to hold the light bulb. Because it feel
s so good when I stop. What was that Indian’s name again? Said the Texan. Said the Irishman. Said the Jew. Clutter and disorder. I found myself plucking index cards out of box-files like some door-to-door salesman in a cartoon, an ugly little man with Dagwood Bumstead shoes and a daft hairstyle. Spilkin told another joke, something off-colour, lime-green, puce.
What was this attack of nerves all about? To speak for myself, I found the lack of discrimination in Mevrouw Bonsma’s dim interior alarming. A great jumble of music had been poured into her, like leftovers into an olla podrida, and it bubbled out in an indiscriminate broth. I am a repository too; but in me, everything has its place. In me, things are filed, whereas she was merely filled.
I imagined that Spilkin, with his fine sense of discrimination, felt the same. When Mevrouw Bonsma sat at our table, we burbled away desperately, as if trying to mend a crack in her foundation. When she returned to her piano, we sat in depleted silence, with our backs stiff and our fists clenched on our knees, while our newspapers lay unread on the table before us. When I went home exhausted, Spilkin was still clamped to the table under the sconce, like a floodlit statue.
Later it occurred to me that if Spilkin had felt the same anxieties as I did, he would have responded with a recitation of the eye chart or some favourite prescriptions, a mortar of solid sense, rather than this sludge of inane jokes. In the light of his subsequent behaviour, I came to believe, strange as it may seem, that he was competing with me for her favours. In which case he had infected me!
Then Mevrouw Bonsma, bless her chapped heels, announced that she had invited Merle and Benny to join us for afternoon tea.
More people! I was mortified. But as it happened, the newcomer – because there was only one – was just what was needed to restore our equilibrium.
*
Benny turned out to be a Pekingese, a canine knick-knack, disproportionately fierce. Benito, I called her afterwards: Il Puce, The Fleabag. In those days, animals were not allowed into the Europa, and so she spent her first visit to the Café tethered to a downpipe next to the door, nipping at the heels of patrons as they came and went. She had a go at my turn-ups, but I made her see sense with the business end of a brogue. They say that people grow to resemble their pets, or choose pets that resemble them. Merle was small, full of bounce, with round wet eyes and limp grey hair in a bob. She was already settled at our table, in the company of Spilkin and Mevrouw Bonsma, thankfully not in my chair. I hardly had time to sit before she declared, matter-of-factly, ‘You must be A. Tearle.’
‘I am the Tearle,’ I replied, ‘the definite article.’
‘I’ve seen your letters to the editor. Suzanna shows them to me.’
‘Good.’ How about that.
‘I liked that one about the rubbish bins, very acute. How did it go again?’ She tucked one flap of her hair behind her ear, as if to hear me better.
‘You mean the one about the lack of?’ I paused for effect, and then recited from memory: ‘One appreciates that the removal of the rubbish bins from our streets is part of a strategy to thwart the murderous ambitions of terrorists. But with littering now reaching unprecedented heights, one cannot but fear that the litter problem itself has become a time bomb waiting to explode.’
‘That was well put.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ve heard all about your System of Records too, from Suzanna, who professes not to understand what you’re up to. Sounds fascinating.’
‘Thank you.’ This enthusiasm was quite disarming.
‘Have you got them in your bag?’
‘A good sample.’
‘So, what does it stand for – the A?’ With a sharp forefinger, she traced the letter in the monogram embossed on my leather briefcase, and then tucked back another flap of hair to expose a second delicate and expectant ear.
‘Aubrey.’ Sotto voce, but Spilkin’s theatrical eyebrows twitched. ‘However, we don’t hold with first names. You can call me Tearle.’
‘Poppycock.’ From the Dutch pappekak. The sort of mush that would agglomerate in Mevrouw Bonsma’s dental sluices. ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. I am not a public schoolboy. It’s pernicious, this bandying about of surnames. Even the press has fallen into the habit. Thatcher said this and Reagan did that. As if people are no longer entitled to the common courtesies. As long as I have a say in the matter, I shall be Mrs Graaff to the world at large and Merle to my friends.’
As it happened, I agreed with her on the neglect of honorifics in the public sphere. But with Spilkin and Tearle it was quite another matter. Before I could begin to explain, she rattled on. ‘Pleased to meet you, Aubrey.’ She gave my hand a hard squeeze. A metacarpal twinged. ‘As for you, Myron, Suzanna’s told me all about you too.’
Oh my! He didn’t look one bit like a Myron.
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Mevrouw Bonsma, ‘I’d prefer to be called Mevrouw Bonsma.’ And simpered hugely, showing a smear of lipstick on a crooked tooth, like blood drawn from her own lip. There was certainly some Dutch influence in her dentition.
Merle observed her down a turned-up nose. It would be hard and dry, that nose, pressing into one’s cheek. ‘My dear, I couldn’t. You’ve been Suzanna for far too long. It’s … set.’
Eveready was hovering. She ordered hot chocolate, although she’d been invited for tea. Then she swept her eyes over the room. ‘So this is where you’ve been hiding out.’
Really. I wouldn’t put it that way.
‘What’s this?’ She fluttered a hand at the mural and looked at me.
‘It’s nowhere in particular. Or rather anywhere in general. It’s a composite.’ Not Erewhon, but Erewhyna. Alibia. Did the name come to me on the spur of the moment?
‘Looks French. I would say Nice. Met a Dr Plesance there once, on the promenade. A chessplayer, rheumatic, but very good-natured and fun to be with. Back in a tick. Just want to speak to that woman about Benny.’
‘I regret to inform you that her dear little dog,’ said Mevrouw Bonsma, ‘is unable to join us.’
‘Right of admission reserved,’ said Spilkin. ‘No quadrupeds allowed.’
Merle made for the counter, and soon Mrs Mavrokordatos was frothing a porringer with warm milk from the espresso machine. A momentary lapse of taste on her part, harbinger of a general collapse still shrouded in the mists of the future. ‘If she must cater for our four-legged friends,’ I said, ‘let them have separate crockery.’
‘I knew you’d get along famously,’ said Mevrouw Bonsma. ‘She’s good with words, like the two of you. She was a schoolteacher in her younger days, before her marriage. And at various other times, a librarian in the Reference Library and an office manager. She knows the Dewey Decimal System backwards.’
There is dew on the terraced lawns of the Hotel Grande, where Merle goes walking before dinner. It is the dew that makes her kick off her shoes and it is her bare feet and the wet hem of her gown that make her the talk of Alibia. When she catches a chill, Dr Plesance has remedies, all of which he has tried out on himself while performing voluntary service during various epidemics. So the ambulance returns empty to the hospital on the hill and Merle is carried on a chaise into the doctor’s parlour.
Merle came back. ‘That woman has the most extraordinary name.’
‘Mavrokordatos,’ said Spilkin.
‘Large-hearted,’ I said. ‘From the Greek makros, long, large, and the Latin cordis, heart.’
She appraised me with a quirk of a smile around her mouth.
‘Only joking,’ I added, just to be on the safe side.
Then she opened a handbag as large and black as a doctor’s, fished out a tube of artificial sweeteners and spilled half a dozen into her mug. She put on a pair of spectacles and blinked experimentally at the room. They were cat’s-eye frames, with diamanté glittering in their canthi, and they made her look astonished. Astonishing? Both. From the depths of the bag, she produced a big flat box.
‘Anyone for Trivial Pursuit?’
*
Merle came again the next day. This time the black bag offered up, along with half a packet of ginger snaps, to which Mrs Mavrokordatos turned a blind eye, the Better Baby Book of Names for Boys. The bag was an armamentarium. In the right hands, the terms it contained, considered as tools for categorizing and classifying, might get the better of any disorder.
‘Let’s see, Aubrey … Aubrey … here we are. From the German Alberich, ruler of elves. You must be the elf then? Only joking, Myron. Famous Aubreys: John Aubrey, author of Brief Lives. Just the one, I’m afraid, it’s not very common. And even that’s a stretch, being a surname.’
I knew the meaning of my own name perfectly well, but there was no stopping her once she got going.
‘And Myron. Greek: muron. Sweet oil, perfume, hence “something delightful” – that’s in quotes. Famous Myrons – this is more like it – Myron, Greek sculptor, known for his Discobolus. Myron Cohen, Jewish-American humorist, known for his You Don’t Have to be Jewish. Of course not. And Myron the Myrmidon, cartoon character, known for his battles in intergalactic space. In order of merit, descending.’
On her next visit, Merle brought a packet of McVitie’s Jaffa cakes and a chart depicting the human skeleton. She unrolled it on the table and secured the corners with salt and pepper cellars. Then she had Mevrouw Bonsma hold out her hands, as if she was addressing an invisible piano, and tapped off on them, with a knitting needle brought solely for that purpose, the phalanges, metacarpals and carpals, and, advancing the length of one arm, the radius and ulna, the humerus, the clavicula. I was able to chime in then with an apposite onions, as the handspring of lexical gymnastics is called – clavicle and clavichord, from the Latin clavis, key – and halt the pointer’s progress to other parts of our pianist’s anatomy. Not that there was anything unseemly in the display, but people may have jumped to the wrong conclusions.
The Restless Supermarket Page 8
