The Bluebird Café (5 page)

Mavis plonked her foot up on the bench next to the bag which contained Bette's Marks and Spencer's food shopping. At least it was all pre-packaged. The ancient pink-and-grey trainer had split, the sole flapped hideously, revealing the knob of a big toe in a whitish towelling sock of the sort that Bette imagined some men might wear to play sports.

‘I'm afraid that I don't carry glue,' said Cllr Doon, but her scathing tone was lost on Mavis who was twitching her toe up and down, up and down, making the hole even bigger.

‘Where's the council glue cupboard then? I am a ratepayer, you know.'

‘The council doesn't usually take responsibility for people's footwear.'

‘Did it on council property, didn't I.' Mavis looked as though she might get violent.

Would a pound coin send her on her way? I'll just shout for security, Bette told herself, although she knew that it would take at least ten minutes for the council's security guards to stub out their cigarettes in their coffee-jar-lid ashtrays and come lumbering up the stairs to apprehend the wrong person. She sighed.

Paul had spent a whole weekend bent double painting hopping frogs on the wide tarmac path that led to the Badger Centre. As he completed the last one some boys zoomed past his paint pot, their rollerblades missing it by a millimetre. He stared after them and saw that his bright green frogs looked as though they had been squashed by a stream of traffic. Oh well. The end of the line for the frogs. He lifted the stencil to reveal that he had smudged the last frog's fingers. He considered finding a pot of pink and adding a lipsticky smile and some varnished fingernails to cover it up. He picked up the paint stuff and followed the frog trail towards the Centre. Paul loved the automatic doors. He thought of them as magic, and he smiled as he breathed in the Centre's special smell of school trips, mice, crayons and sugar paper, seeds and aquaria. If ants had a smell, it would be there too.

The Centre Manager, Madelaine, was sitting at the desk with Kirsty, a work-experience girl, who they hoped might stay on as a volunteer. She was developing a crush on Paul, so she probably would.

‘Hi, Paul!' said Kirsty. He wondered why as they had already said hello to each other that morning. He and Madelaine just nodded at each other when the need arose.

‘Finished the frogs,' he told them. ‘They look squashed though.'

‘Never mind,' said Madelaine. ‘Nobody's going to really look at them, are they?'

‘I guess not,' said Paul.

‘Kirsty's been clearing out the mice,' Madelaine told him.

‘Could she have a go at the noticeboard? Lots of things are out of date,' he said.

‘I did it this morning,' Kirsty pouted.

‘Well, the hawk display was a month ago. And this sponsored walk's long gone. And the Owl Talk. Could you put the Birdsong Seminar in the middle, with the Bank Holiday Bug Hunt?' Madelaine added.

‘Awright, Mad Elaine,' Kirsty sighed, drawing out the syllables. She had wanted to do her work experience at Marwell Zoo, but they'd been full up. At least she wasn't stuck in a rest home like her friend Nicky. That's what they gave you if you didn't put your form in on time, even if you were allergic to the sight of blood. This Paul Cloud was pretty gorgeous, with his long legs and crooked smile, and his sandy hair always messed up, like he'd just got out of bed; but it couldn't stop her from getting bored. She'd already cleaned out all the tanks and hung up some stuff for the birds and fed the fish. This Mad Elaine was bossy too. And now she was going into a huddle with Paul. Kirsty tried to look unconcerned, and started to line up the magnetic badgers (45p each); but she could still hear old Mad Elaine telling Paul that she had handed in her notice and she was moving to Norfolk and a job at some duck place. Then she heard Paul say: ‘I'm sure working with wildfowl will really suit you.' He didn't even mean it as an insult! And then he gave Mad Elaine his really nice smile, and she hugged him.

‘Who's the boss if you're not here?' Kirsty asked later.

‘Well, the Chair of the Committee, I suppose,' Madelaine told her.

‘Is that Paul Cloud?' Kirsty asked. She wanted to test out saying his name.

‘No. Paul's just on the Committee. He's a volunteer. At the moment.'

The young Lucy Brookes thought that she came from a Bohemian Background. Her mother Jane played the piano and gave lessons and had tablemats with scenes of Montmartre.

When she was ten Lucy joined a group called ‘Young Stagers'. They put on productions of
Annie
and
Oliver!,
and gave afternoon shows to Old Folk and the Handicapped. Lucy longed for a career on the stage, but her talents went largely undiscovered, and she remained trapped as Third Urchin and Fifth Orphan, while other blonder, smaller children hogged the limelight. She had occasional turns in variety shows, but was more often left in the wings, and spent most of each performance peering through tears in the curtains at the audience nodding and dozing. After the curtain went down the Young Stagers were instructed to chat to the audience. Lucy would pass around sausage rolls and have nothing to say, so she'd ask old men what they'd done in the war. After tea the old people would sing songs.

It was late November. The time for old folks' Christmas parties. Were they held so early to get them over with, or to ensure that as many of the potential guests as possible made it to the party before they died? Didn't it matter that the party was nowhere near actual Christmas? If your life was so empty that you were on the guest list, then would you be past caring anyway? Lucy was nearly twelve and beginning to wonder
about such things. A man was asleep beside his accordion. A woman without much hair nudged Lucy.

‘Wake him up! He'll want to sing “Paddy McGinty's Goat”! He'll want to sing “Paddy McGinty's Goat”!' she shouted. A chorus of others joined in. Lucy went over to the man.

‘Sir,' she said. ‘Sir.' She tapped his hand. It wasn't very warm.

‘His name's Eric. Wake him up!' yelled the woman.

‘Wake up, Eric!' said Lucy. ‘They want you to sing.' She shook his shoulder.

Eric fell forward and out of his chair. Yellow stuff came out of his mouth and nose and went on Lucy's skirt.

‘Oh, he's gone! He's gone!' said the woman. The chorus joined in. Lucy tried to sit him up, but he was too heavy. Eric's accordion fell off its chair and landed with a discord of despair. Lucy felt the yellow stuff on her legs. Mobile adults came to her aid. An ambulance was called.

‘At least he made it to the party,' one of the ambulancemen remarked.

After that Lucy quit the boards. She also quit Sunday school. The doll's house went undecorated that Christmas. Its inhabitants lay slumped in drunken attitudes against the walls, with only a paste bowl of fruit for sustenance.

Lucy announced on Christmas morning that she had become a vegetarian, and that caused trouble. She became insular and sulky, and hung around the house like one of the abandoned doll's house people. In the spring she decided to become a gardener. She grew pots of geraniums, sunflowers, marigolds and tiny cacti from seeds. The runner beans had a bumper crop and Lucy cooked them and served them with lashings of melted margarine. Her father speared them on his meaty fork and
pronounced them Very good indeed'. Then she cooked other things – cheese straws, jam tarts, Victoria sponges, banana cakes – tins and tins of stuff that nobody would eat. She started to take cookery books out of the library and experimented with grownup food. When she was fifteen she got an A in her Home Economics O level, and considered going to catering college, but the thought of all that meat put her off, and anyway, she already knew how to cook. Instead she took A levels in English, History of Art, History and Home Economics. She went to university in Southampton to study English. She met Paul. Life was going to be one long tea party.

Paul's family lived in Sussex. They had moved there from Penshurst, a little village just outside Southampton, when Paul was fourteen. They all thought it interesting that Paul had seemingly moved back to his roots when he chose his university. Paul said that the Southampton University course looked the most interesting. His father, James Cloud, taught Latin and had curly grey hair and a penchant for sandals, not open-toed Jesus Creepers, but woven ones, French ones. He bought a pair every year at La Rochelle. His mother, Maggie, had very neat hair and favoured wraparound skirts. They liked the theatre, and living near Chichester meant that they saw a few good shows each year without having to brave the crowds and noise of the West End and the homeless at Victoria. That's what they told their friends.

Start-Rite shoes had been Paul's lot. A liking for sensible shoes seemed to be genetic, and even when he was at his most rebellious – going off to school with a pair of drainpipes hidden under the flappy John Lewis uniform trousers Maggie had so carefully picked out for him, and so carefully sewn the name tapes into – he still wore a pair of desert boots which he'd Scotchgarded himself. He had a green canvas rucksack adopted from a friend. ‘David Bowie' had been black marker-penned on the flap and was now fading to grey. Paul went through a phase of trying to skive and muck around, but he couldn't help accidentally learning things and ending up with straight As. He was embarrassingly good at Geography and Biology. He
tried and tried, but he could always remember how artesian wells were made, the difference between taiga and tundra, the names and positions of the Great Lakes, the main stops on the Trans-Siberian railway. The cross-section through a dogfish was a doddle, phloem and xylem flowed through his fingers. He could draw a perfect diagram of the heart and got a starred Grade 1 for his S-level Biology.

The Clouds really hit it off with Lucy's family, the Brookeses. Lucy's mum talked to Paul's mum about music. They all discussed programmes on Radio 4, gardening and The Theatre. They made jokes in Latin, which Lucy suspected her dad had been cramming from a
Past Times
catalogue desk diary. Lucy and Paul made deliberate efforts to keep the two families apart. They thought the Clouds and Brookeses would start ganging up on them, dropping collective hints about weddings and grandchildren, and the importance of Buying a House.

Lucy was becoming more and more irritable. The café broke even, just, but only if she paid Abigail a pittance and she and Paul lived on the customers' leftovers. She was always tired and could never stop her hands from smelling of tinned tomatoes, even though she had bought herself a very expensive soap-sized and -shaped chunk of steel from the Divertimenti catalogue. The lump was reputedly used by all the top chefs who didn't want their hands smelling of onion.

It was 8.30 a.m., Paul was still asleep. The pilot light had gone out in the boiler and there was no hot water for a bath. She opened the curtains and saw a small, grubby, funny-looking man pulling their rubbish into the gutter. She thought he was stealing it. Then she realised that he was one of the binmen, a council bag-deliverer. He stood and stared at the Bluebird with what looked like contempt and then he hitched his satchel of binbags higher on his shoulder and walked on. He hadn't left them any bags.

She opened the window and leaned out.

‘Hey! Where are our bags?'

Gilbert turned to see a beautiful girl in not many clothes hanging out of a window and TALKING TO HIM.

‘Give us some bags or I'll write to the council!' yelled Lucy. Gilbert fled.

‘What are you doing now, fishwife?' Paul had woken to ask. She turned to see his loose pink morning mouth, the reddish stubble around the gills, the bleary eyes.

‘Fishwife is right,' she said, and stomped off.

She crushed pilchards for Fennel, sniffed her hands again. More tinned tomato and fishwife hands. Paul appeared in the kitchen and they were lost in the routine of the day. She felt faintly guilty for being rude to the bag-deliverer, but then he hadn't been doing his job, was probably selling their bags or something. She cleaned the café while Paul cleaned some vegetables. At 11.30 they put on the coffee and unlocked the door. Someone was waiting. The funny-looking man.

‘Hello,' said Lucy.

‘Are you open yet?'

‘Yes. Just opening now.'

‘I brought you some bags.'

‘Thank you. We do use lots, but we never get our share.'

‘Why don't you open for breakfast? A lot of people need their breakfast, you know.' Gilbert continued to stand blocking the doorway. He handed Lucy a wad of bin bags.

‘But there are dozens here.'

‘It's your share. Don't tell the council, please.' He looked desperate.

‘Tell the council what?' said Paul, appearing behind Lucy, eating a wedge of toast and peanut butter, and feeling voluble.

‘I've got a lot to tell the council,' he said, mouth full, peanut-butter breath. Gilbert blanched beyond the colour of dough. ‘They spray the hedges with pesticide,' Paul went on between bites. ‘It's so strong that a man has to wear a spacesuit. I suppose it's a man anyway.'

‘What else would it be?' asked Lucy. ‘Robo-employee?'

‘I saw a goldfinch eating stuff they'd just sprayed. I've been meaning to write to them for weeks.'

‘A goldfinch? Where?' Gilbert forgot to be nervous.

‘In that car park, by the Six Dials roundabout,' Paul told him. Gilbert looked ready to rush off and see, but Paul said, ‘Are you interested in birds? Come in. Be our first customer of the day. There's some coffee on already.'

‘Tea, please,' said Gilbert. Lucy moved aside and Gilbert stepped over the threshold of the Bluebird Café.

‘What sort of tea?' said Lucy.

‘Lots of milk and three,' said Gilbert. He hadn't noticed the enamel canisters labelled from ‘Almond' to ‘Zinger – Orange'. The urn spluttered and Lucy handed him a bowl of brown rocks. Gilbert was confused.