Doll (4 page)

It’s Sunday so I’m a bus boy. My father’s brasserie has not moved into the twenty-first century, there are no bus girls here. Though, to be fair, my co-worker at the dumbwaiter is Aaron. Very much a boy. Ginger-haired and pimply, he has something wrong with his nose, so he keeps his mouth permanently open in order to breathe. Aaron and I press the dumbwaiter buttons and steaming plates of food arrive from the kitchen below. We open the lift doors, extract the plates, put them on trays and present the offerings to the rushed and impatient waitresses. In return the waitresses bring us trays of dirty dishes. We scrape the leavings into Waste Bin 1: chips, lettuce, beef fat, fish bones. We drop empty bottles into Waste Bin 2, stack the
greasy crockery in the second lift. Push the buttons. Red. Green. Basement.

It’s mechanical, repetitive work and it doesn’t stop you thinking. Today I’m thinking about Aaron, about how, when someone finally kisses him, he’ll probably die from lack of oxygen. But then I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kiss Aaron so maybe he has a long life ahead after all. Plates in. Plates out. Actually, I’m not really thinking about Aaron. I’m trying not to think about Grandma, about what she said. Which is stupid, because it was days ago, the day I went to the bridge.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “Skip school?Your father said you didn’t have to go. But you wanted to. You agreed to go. So you should have gone.” And then: “We can’t have lying, Tilly.”

Which always means, plates in, plates out, that Grandma’s going to talk about my grandfather. Gerry. Wonderful, impeccable, dead Gerry. Tomatoes into Bin 1, beer bottle into Bin 2.

“Gerry never let me down. If Gerry said he’d be home at six, then he was home at six. Even if he’d had to drive six hundred miles that day. That’s what integrity’s all about. Honesty. Trust. Do you want me not to trust you, Tilly?”

Thai Fish out. Roast Belly of Pork out. Vegetables out.

“What have you to say for yourself, Tilly?”

More vegetables out. Poached eggs out. Surely breakfast should be off by now?

“Speak up, Tilly.”

“Does being dead make people perfect, Grandma?”

“Don’t be cheeky, Tilly.”

“Tilly? Tilly!” It’s Janey now, one of the waitresses. “Are you deaf?” Janey has a problem with the cover at Table Ten. It’s a woman. She asked for soft poached eggs and the eggs are, apparently, like bullets. Janey has to go down and speak to Chef, she has to have soft eggs fast.

“Please, Tilly. Just get these drinks to Table Seven. They’re screaming for them.”

Buses aren’t allowed to get drinks from the bar. It’s against the law. But we are, when required, allowed to carry them. There are four drinks on this tray. Two tall glasses of Coca-Cola with ice and lemon, one large balloon glass of honey-coloured wine, Chardonnay probably, and one shorts glass. In this glass is a shot of vodka. Vodka on the rocks with lime and soda. And even the lime can’t mask it. That thin, distilled, sweet odour that makes my heart reel.

“Tilly!”

The smell winds around my body, around and around, and up my nose.

“Tilly – for God’s sake!”

Can’t she see my hand is trembling? I cannot lift the tray. Cannot have that smell nearer me than it already is. No. Please no.

“Table Seven, Tilly.”

“You can do it, Tilly,” says Gerda. “Trust me.”

I pick up the tray and I walk.

“Where on earth are the drinks?”

Jan has his eyes on Mrs Van Day so as not to have to look at Mercy. Mrs Van Day is tall and commanding. She wears a tight black bodice under an expensive suit and her nails and her lips are scarlet. She presides over the table. She directs the conversation, commandeers it, drives it like an army man might drive a Saracen tank. She is thrilled to inform Mrs Spark that not only is the sponsorship deal agreed with the local paper, but she has big news. Really Big News.

“It’s confirmed. They rang me this morning. Sunday. Can you believe it? Sunday morning. The producer himself.”

“Yes?” says Susan Spark.

“The producer of Pop Idol. He’s agreed to send a scout. Yes, a scout for the programme at our little show! And of course he’s not making any promises, can’t say they’ll choose one of our talents for the TV show but – well, you know me, Susan …”

“Marvellous,” says Susan Spark. “I don’t know how you do it, Gloria.”

“So, Jan,” says Mrs Van Day, leaning forward and giving a little laugh. “It could be you. You could be famous.”

Jan manages a small smile. But he doesn’t lift his head because he can feel her eyes on him. Not Mrs Van Day’s, but her daughter Mercy’s. She’s waiting for a reaction. But what reaction can he give to “famous”? Being famous is not something to which Jan aspires. He aspires only to get through this meal, sitting beside the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, without making a fool of himself. There he’s said it. Mercy Van Day – the most beautiful girl in the world. Did he say world? Yes, world probably. She’s the kind of girl you see in pictures, the princess girl with the long blonde hair (Mercy’s hair is short, but very blonde), the melting eyes and the perfect body. The
sort of girl who always gets the prince. Only Jan is not a prince. Never has been, never will be. He doesn’t say enough. Doesn’t have the right words in his mouth. So the princesses walk on by. Only this one hasn’t, this princess is sitting right beside him with need coming off her like sweat. He’s burning up with the way she’s looking at him. And she’s been looking at him this way from the moment he came into the restaurant.

The Van Days were already seated when he and Susan Spark arrived. But Mrs Van Day rose, she towered.

“This is my daughter, Mercy,” she said.

And he’d held out a hand, as you would to a stranger, but she wasn’t a stranger, she said. They’d met before. And he’d nodded, of course, partly to validate her and partly because of the look she was giving him, a stare so intent that he was forced to drop his own gaze. And he’s barely lifted his head since. But he doesn’t have to. He can see her in the bright silver of the candlestick, in the shimmering curves of the glasses which wait for water. And he can smell her. That rosy white English girl skin. Bathed and soaped and perfumed but still with that musky, needy, animal tang. He swallows. His throat is parched.

“Really,” says Mrs Van Day. “I’ve never known the service here so slow. What can they be doing? Pressing the grapes?”

“Oh look,” says Jan’s mother. “Here we are, I think.”

A waitress comes to the table. “Vodka?” she says.

And when he hears that voice, Jan lifts his head, he looks up.

It is the girl from the bridge.

“Tilly!” Mercy exclaims.

But the girl only has eyes for Jan. Those same angry eyes she had at the bridge. As though he has no right to be in this restaurant. As though, once again, he has intruded. And he would like to say something, defend himself, or just make her relax. But what can he say? He does not know her. Yet he feels as if he knows her. Veron. She walked into his dream and knew him. When he was a tiny child and woke screaming in the night, Susan Spark said, “Hush, hush, it is only a dream.” As if dreams were nothings, curls of smoke which would dissipate in the morning air. But his dreams stay with him. And the girl is in the dreams.

“Vodka,” Tilly says again, as though she is biting the word.

“That’s mine, dear,” says Mrs Van Day.

It’s then that Jan sees the doll. Or at least the doll’s head. It protrudes from Tilly’s apron pocket. A shining mass of black hair. And he has an urge to touch, to reach out his hand, because he has a sudden vision (perhaps a dream) of the doll as a physical pain. As if, perhaps, the girl keeps the doll as close to her as he keeps stump-armed Violeta. And, perhaps, suffers as much.

But if he moves a hand, the girl moves faster.

She bangs a glass down in front of him. Coke slops.

“Oh,” exclaims Mrs Van Day.

And then, sharp as a needle, Mercy’s voice says: “Do you two know each other?”

I’m back at the bus-boy station. I don’t know how I unloaded those drinks from the tray. Put that glass of swirling vodka down with the boy looking, staring. The way he does. As if he knows something. Looking at me. Looking at Gerda. I saw his eyes slip right down, and I couldn’t touch her, protect her, because I needed both hands for the tray, the drinks. What does he want?

Jan.

That’s what she called him. Jan.

Repeating it. “Do you know Tilly, Jan?”

Her boy then. The hunted, hunting boy from the bridge is Mercy’s boy. The drill-eyed hound at my back is Mercy’s Inca god.

Gerda says: “Be calm.”

But I am not calm. I can still feel Mrs Van Day’s hand as it closed over mine.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “to hear about your mother.”

Mercy’s mother pitying me. Mercy’s mother still alive. Sitting there at the table having lunch. With Jan and his mother. Mother and daughter. Mother and son. Two perfect families. Happy, smiling.

I’m so sorry.

So sorry.

So sorry.

“It’s full,” says Aaron, through his nose.

“What?”

“The rubbish bin,” he says very slowly and very nasally. “You can’t fit any more bottles in because it’s full.”

I look down. In each hand I have a beer bottle and I’m pushing, I’m forcing them down into that
overflowing bin, as though I would break them, crush them, smash the glass.

“Here,” says Aaron. “I’ll go empty it.”

“No.” I heave the bin liner from the plastic container. Bottles clash and clink. “I’ll do it.”

“It’ll be too heavy for you,” says Aaron. He likes to take rubbish to the kitchen. On the way back he filches chips.

“Leave off. I’m taking it.”

His need for food is strong, but not as strong as my need to be away from those happy, happy families. I lug the bin liner around the counter.

“Watch it,” says Janey as I bang into her legs. But I go on, kicking the bag towards the kitchen steps. Kicking it down the steps. Clink. Clash. Clash. Clink.

The nearer I come to the bottom, the hotter it gets. Gas jets flare, ovens exhale and heat clings to the ceiling strip lights. A radio thump-thumps behind the noise of the washing-up machine.

“Kiss my arse, two roast beef,” yells Chef.

Above the steel stoves extractor fans whirl uselessly. A huge vat of gravy heaves and roils.

Chef stirs a finger in a tray of Yorkshire puddings.

“These are dried sea sponges aren’t they, Phil?”

I have to be careful, manoeuvre my way between the apple sauce and gravy stove and the salad preparation table. The space is narrow and the floor greasy.

“Isn’t Aaron on today?” asks Phil.

I grunt.

“Does that mean you turned into Aaron?” Phil remarks.

“Can you scale your omelettes down a bit?” shouts Chef.

At the back of the kitchen, near to the entrance of the alleyway where the bottles have to go, Luca is working. Despite his Italian name, Luca is Nordic looking: big, powerful and very pale-skinned. He’s flashing a knife against a steel. I hear the noise of sharpening, feel it, like the sparks were in my face. I cannot take my eyes from the flashing blade, right, left, right, left. It’s a vegetable knife of course. But a restaurant one. So it’s big and not unlike the long thin-bladed carving knife in my mother’s house.

“Turn away,” says Gerda. “Take the bottles.”

Luca puts down the steel. He smiles. He’s going to chop chillies. His movements are brutally swift. He cuts off the stalk end and then, holding the chilli
between the finger and thumb of his left hand, slices a line from tip to gaping mouth. One perfect slit and then the seeds are scraped away, the red flesh pitilessly chopped, the knife moving with ferocious rhythm. And me not moving. Me rooted to the spot looking at the chopped red flesh, the pieces of it, falling away from his knife and thinking this, it looks like blood. Drops of blood, falling away from the knife. And I want to make it stop. I have to stop that blood, that knife.

“
Pull
yourself together, Tilly
,” says Grandmother. “
You
don’t know what you’re talking
about
.”

And Gerda says: “Mama’s all right. Mama loves you. She’ll be better in the morning. Go now, Tilly.”

But I can’t go. I’m transfixed. And any minute now Luca’s going to stop chopping and ask why I’m hanging around here with my mouth open.

“Aargh!” screams Luca.

He has cut himself. He has gashed the tip of his left index finger.

Bright red blood is blobbing on to the chopping board.

“It’s only petals,” says Gerda. “It is only petals falling. Red rose petals.”

“Aah, aah, aaah,” shouts Luca.

“Stupid git,” says Chef.

Luca turns to the basin behind him, runs his finger under a stream of cold water.

While his back is turned, I stretch up to the chopping board. Put my finger in the blood, smear it. It smells familiar. It smells of metal. In the blood are chilli bits and chilli seeds. I scoop them up, put them in the starched white pocket of my apron. Then I take out the rubbish.

The alleyway is cool, a breeze coming down from the street above. I breathe deeply. Take a stinking lungful of rotted vegetables, stale beer, car exhaust fumes, cold stone floors.

Only petals. Just red petals. I put my hand on Gerda, around her wrist. Feel the prick of the tiny, red glass beads. The triangular point of one in my fingertip. Just red petals.

I lift the bag of bottles, push it up towards the mouth of the green wheelie bin. This wheelie bin is empty. The first of the bottles thud on to plastic, then they begin to crash and smash on top of each other. A single wine bottle jams itself into the corner of the black bag, refusing to budge. I put my hand deep
inside the bag, wrest it free and fling it into the bin. It bounces, clinks, spins and settles.

I am calm now.

The bag is torn. I throw it in the ordinary rubbish and then I head back through the kitchen.

Luca’s finger sports a blue plaster. He is crushing garlic, using the heel of his hand on the back of that very sharp knife. He smiles.

“Hi, Tilly,” he says. “How ya doing?”