Songs from the Violet Cafe (13 page)

Freda and Evelyn took short walks to keep their circulation moving because it was getting cold. To pass the time they sang songs they both knew, like ‘Ten Green Bottles’, songs without special meaning, just words to take them through the hours. Freda sang ‘Beautiful Brown Eyes’ because this is what she used to sing to Evelyn when she was a little girl, and Evelyn seemed softer and kinder, more like the child she adored while Lou was still away at sea.

‘Mum,’ Evelyn said, when they had run out of songs, ‘David’s asked me out.’

‘David Finke?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that …’ Freda began.

‘Why not? He works with you. Isn’t anyone good enough for me?’

‘Well,’ said Freda, flustered, ‘that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? I mean if anything goes wrong, it would be embarrassing.’

‘Nothing’s going to go wrong, Mum. He’s just asked me to go to the pictures on Wednesday night, seeing as I’ve got a night off owing to me, though goodness knows, Violet Trench will probably dock me
for not being there tonight.’

‘Well, you have to get out, dear,’ her mother said. ‘I just don’t want you getting involved with anyone when you’re off to varsity so soon.’

‘Mum. I’m not getting involved, all right? I’m just going to the pictures.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Freda, who’d had to take a pee in the bushes near the road and stood in oozing mud slime. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘I love you so much. I love you more than anyone in the world.’

‘I know,’ Evelyn said, and sighed. She was the only person in the world her mother loved, and the burden was almost too much to bear.

By this time, with the moreporks calling in the dark, they’d worked out that Lou was not coming, and flagged down another motorist, using a torch to attract attention. This way, they got a lift back to town. When they arrived back at the house, it was empty.

‘I never thought of my mother as vindictive,’ Jessie said, when some weeks had passed and her mother hadn’t sent on any clothes.

‘Mothers always are, that’s the whole point,’ Marianne said. She was wearing a clay face mask, although it was difficult to see how her flawless complexion could be improved.

‘Why do you say that?’

They were in the bedroom on a wet Saturday afternoon, and there was nowhere else to go between now and work. Down the hall, there was music. David Finke had bought a record player and he was playing music with an agitated quality about it. Any moment they expect the landlady to tell him to turn it down.

‘What would you say if your mother slept with your boyfriend?’ Marianne said, before she could stop herself.

‘That’s just crazy,’ Jessie said. She had thought Marianne couldn’t shock her any more but then she guessed she was easy prey, and it was too late to pull back and act as if this was a joke. Marianne was enjoying her reaction.

So then Marianne found herself telling Jessie what Sybil had
done, and where, right there on the bed where Jessie slept, and how much Marianne hated her and would never forgive her. She showed Jessie the place where she had worn her engagement ring for nearly a year, and how the white part wouldn’t disappear until summer was really here, and the tan would cover over it.

‘I can’t believe anyone’s mother would do that,’ Jessie said. Her mother and Jock and the whole business of being female — it had had something to do with her leaving home, but what Marianne was describing was too extraordinary for her to make sense of. Marianne shrugged and let her shoulders fall, so that Jessie could see that she meant it, although it was difficult to read her expression behind the stiff mud mask.

‘Your mother needs treatment,’ Jessie said.

‘It’s just a shag,’ Marianne said, after a silence. ‘When all’s said and done, what’s a shag? I’ve had lots of shags — I had my first one on my paper run. I just don’t like sharing them with my mother.’

‘But you were in love with Derek,’ Jessie said, her embarrassment turning to outrage.

‘Nah.’ Marianne began to buff her fingernails. ‘It’s probably just as well. Who wants to end up like Hester and Belle, tied down to one man for life? Besides, now I’ve got a boyfriend who’s married, and you know, it’s different, it’s just different.’

‘You can’t,’ Jessie said.

‘But I have,’ Marianne said, smiling her perfect smile, even though the mask was cracking and flaking.

‘It’s not …’ Jessie stopped. There were some things it was better not to hear.

‘Nobody you know.’

‘You never know, I might,’ Jessie, said, in spite of herself. Because Jessie was getting like the rest of them at the café, knowing all the regulars and who liked their meat rare, and who wouldn’t complain even if their arses were on fire, and who might surreptitiously leave a tip, although Violet Trench frowned on the practice.

‘It’s a secret,’ Marianne says. As she would.

‘I’ll help you make some clothes,’ Hester said. ‘I’ve finished my wedding dress and I can’t do any more to Susan’s dress until she comes for her fitting.’ Hester had swiftly and unexpectedly become Jessie’s friend. She didn’t know how this had come about, but Jessie sensed Violet’s approval of her, and if that was the case, Hester would go along with it. All the same, invitations to visit were timed for when Hester’s mother was away at the shop, as if perhaps Ruth hadn’t been told about them. Jessie fell into a pattern of calling round to Hester’s place in the afternoons before they began work at the café. Hester, her mouth full of pins, fitted cotton blouses, a patterned skirt and a straight-fitting dress with a scooped-out back because, Hester said, Jessie had a lovely spine, which seemed a nice way of saying she looked good back to front. Mrs Trench had remarked on it too, Hester said.

So Jessie knew she was being talked about and she found it at once discomforting and reassuring, as if she was achieving some place in this odd but mostly benevolent new family.

When Hester wanted Jessie to try things on, she took her to her mother’s bedroom where there was a full-length mirror. The bed was covered by a blue satin bedspread with ruche edges, and a fat bolster where the pillows sat. On the dressing table stood pots and jars of Roget and Gallet talcum and Eau de Cologne 4711, and some rose-bloom rouge. An embroidered sampler hanging on the wall read: ‘An egg in the box is worth two in the nest.’ Like some coded message.

‘What does it mean?’ Jessie asked.

‘Oh, that old thing. My mother has some rubbish, doesn’t she? I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to a place of my own. I’m going to paint everything white. Owen and I are going to have a cottage of our own on the farm. It’s not very big, but there’ll be two bedrooms. Perhaps you’ll be able to come and stay with me. Owen’s going to buy ready-cut furniture, that lovely blond pine, it’s ever so smart. He’s a real handyman.’ Hester’s own bedroom in her mother’s house was more like a child’s, or a servant’s, with an iron-framed bed covered by a heavy white quilt. ‘I like to keep things simple,’ she said, although, to Jessie, this seemed at odds with the ornate patterned gowns she toiled over.

At first, Jessie had trouble reconciling the Owen who sat in Ruth Hagley’s dining room, surrounded by fine frilly things, blowing on his tea before he sipped it, with the big man in the swanndri and waders. But she believed the openness she had first observed in him was real, that he was an uncomplicated man with no sharp edges she could detect. She saw how perfectly he and Hester matched each other. There was something guileless about them, the way they slipped together in and out of their dances, their comfortable routines of talk. Hester told her that they planned to have children as soon as they were married because she’d be too old if they left it much longer. She’d like to start some layettes now but she thought that might send out the wrong signals to people, so she’d just have to wait. All the same, she and Owen talked about the names of the children they might have. She had a little booklet hidden in her sewing box called
3500
Names
for
Baby,
with a cover that showed a couple facing each other pointing over each other’s shoulders in different directions, but looking all the while into each other’s eyes. The woman had a sweetly curved belly beneath a turquoise sweater. Leila, said Hester. Too fancy, said Owen. Kenneth, said Owen. Too plain, too old-fashioned, Hester responded. Stephen. Yes perhaps, perhaps Stephen, but maybe with a ‘v’ instead of a ‘ph’. Oh darling,
darling,
they cried to each other, and laughed. As if they were making love, Jessie thought, too private for her to witness.

‘Don’t let the old trout make you too tired,’ Owen said tenderly.

‘Owen.’ Hester put her fingers to her lips, her eyes belatedly making signals in Jessie’s direction.

But no, he was not referring to Ruth. ‘Sometimes Mrs Trench takes you for granted,’ he said, his face looking hot.

‘We owe her, darling,’ Hester said in a mysterious grown-up voice that meant enough is enough.

It was only when she had been in their company two or three times that Jessie learned of the one problem that lay unresolved between them. She knew when Hester was expecting her, and had developed the habit of simply going straight in the unlocked back door. This time, she knew straight away that she should have
knocked. Hester and Owen sat staring at each other across the dining room table, their faces red.

‘I’m not changing my mind,’ Owen said. ‘It’s the one thing.’

‘I know,’ Hester was saying miserably. ‘I just haven’t got round to it.’

‘Well then,’ Owen said, ‘you’ll just have to tell her. The invitations are going out next week.’ Then they saw Jessie, and Owen stood up, pushing the velvet-padded chair out behind him. ‘I’ll see you.’

‘Owen,’ said Hester, ‘I will. I promise. It’s bad enough, Susan not coming for her fitting. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, she’s had months to get here.’

‘Please don’t go,’ Jessie said to Owen. ‘I was just, you know, just dropping in for a minute.’

‘I have to, or I’ll be late for milking,’ Owen said. He hesitated, before stooping and kissing Hester’s cheek. ‘It’ll be all right.’

When he was gone, and Hester was still trying to take charge of her wobbly voice, she told Jessie what was bothering them. ‘It’s the best man. I’m just going to have to stand up to my mother about him.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing. It’s just that he’s, well, he’s Chinese.’

‘Is it Harry?’

‘Yes,’ Hester said, appearing taken aback that Jessie already knew this. Hadn’t Owen told her about their first encounter on Lou’s boat? And why would he have held back on that?

Hester explained that although Harry was an older man, he and Owen had become friends. When Owen was just out of school he’d worked in the market garden.

‘Well, do you mind about him being best man?’

‘Of course not,’ Hester said, her eyes pained. ‘It’s just that my mother’s my mother, you know what I mean?’

Sooner or later, summer turns and then it’s over. Something was bound to happen with all this stuff floating just under the surface. The restaurant was full the night the police came. Jessie looked up
from a pork grill and saw two policemen standing framed in the entrance to the Violet Café.

‘This is a raid,’ said the taller of the two, a beanpole of a fellow with red hair showing beneath his helmet. ‘Everyone out.’

‘You can’t do this to me,’ said Violet.

‘Yes, we can.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘On suggestion that liquor is sold illegally at this establishment.’

‘Well, you go right ahead,’ said Violet, tilting her chin in the air. ‘You search the premises.’

‘I can vouch for the place,’ said Lou. ‘Nobody’s been drinking in here tonight. Ask the chap who just went out — he’s got the pricker because there wasn’t any booze here.’

‘Thanks, Mr Messenger. If you wouldn’t mind just removing yourself from the premises, we’ll check this out for ourselves.’

‘Go on then, everyone,’ Violet said, ‘you go outside. I’m staying here — you’ll have to arrest me if you want me out. But I’m telling you, if you find everything in order and my girls have been humiliated in this way, I’ll sue the lot of you.’

‘Well.’ The redhead scratched his head. ‘Perhaps you could all just stand here at the front of the shop. Tell your kitchen staff to come out too. It’s just a recce really.’

‘Oh, not a real raid. I see. Well, come on then, you lot. Hester and Belle, get yourselves out here,’ Violet said, standing at the kitchen door. The two women emerged, Hester wiping her face with the back of her hand, looking as if she was about to cry.

‘What will Owen say, if he hears about this?’

‘Oh stop it, Hester,’ said Violet. ‘This is a farce if ever I saw one.’ The police were going around the tables inspecting glasses and cups and sniffing them.

Belle didn’t look concerned at all. Her big blue eyes
were dancing, as she pulled her pony-tail a shade higher, making herself look pert and pretty. Lou Messenger turned and looked at her as she came out of the kitchen, his eyes lighting up as if he had just seen an apparition or a blessed happening.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

‘I’m the dish-washer,’ said Belle. ‘Taken,’ she said, slipping her engagement ring out of her pocket, where she kept it while she was working, and slipping it on her finger.

‘That’s my father you’re talking to, Belle,’ Evelyn said, in a dangerous mean voice.

‘Well, I know that,’ Belle said.

‘We only let her out for special events like police raids,’ said Marianne, seeming to take Evelyn’s part. Evelyn shot her a grateful look.

The policemen had gone into the kitchen, followed by Violet. ‘Crime down in the town, is it?’ she said. ‘Nothing much to do?’

‘Just stay where you are, ma’am.’

‘And nobody will get hurt, you mean,’ Violet said, parodying their tone of voice. David raised his hands above the piano’s keyboard.

‘I said, don’t move,’ said the red-haired policeman.

‘I’m just the piano player,’ David said.

He played ‘Little Brown Jug’, a fixed glee in his smile, as if outwitting the police was the most entertaining thing he’d ever done.
Ha
ha
ha,
you
and
me,
little
brown
jug,
how
I
love
thee.