Songs from the Violet Cafe (7 page)

BOOK: Songs from the Violet Cafe
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‘I don't like to mention this,' Freda said, ‘but the new shop is putting up a special display of guns and deer heads in the window.'

Ruth shuddered. ‘Good luck to him, I say. The customers will get a nice bite to eat when they come here.'

‘They're something of a novelty, these book signing sessions,' Freda observed.

‘Oh, people have book parties in the cities all the time, these days,' said Ruth airily, ‘One has to move with the times.' Privately, she thought how tired Freda was looking.

F
REDA AND
E
VELYN, AND, IN HIS ABSENCE,
L
OU

Freda Messenger sat in front of the microphone, her finger poised on the button, waiting for her voice level to be taken. The studio was like a small cell. No natural light intruded. Between her and the technician stood a soundproof pane of glass. In these moments before the broadcast began, she was aware that intangible airwaves were her only connection with the world beyond, and this was when things always seemed as though they might slip out of her grasp. It was not that she didn't enjoy her work as a shopping reporter. If she was asked she would say what a great privilege it was to be part of the working lives of so many people in the town, and that in return she made a valuable contribution to their businesses. But she always felt fearful just before she started, as if some secret act, more private than love or sex, was about to be performed in public. Some would call it stage fright. In preparation, she repeated a ritual that worked for her week in and week out, breathing deeply through her nose, expelling air with a slight aaaahhh, in and out, until her terror abated.

Only today she couldn't breathe at all. Her in breaths emerged as choking gasps. Her nose was blocked and her eyes so swollen she had kept her dark glasses on. Any moment now, she would have to take them off because under the fluorescent light tube it was impossible to read her script.

A red light on the panel alerted her.

‘Try a level now,' said David Finke, the technician. He was a spiky-haired youth with a white face and red-rimmed eyes. He boarded in town and slept between shifts. That was all he did, he told her. Never went out, just slept. What else was there to do in this hellhole of a town, this pit of a place, reeking of hydrogen sulphide? Where would he go? If he went out he was just as likely to fall down a vent hole and be boiled in a pot like puha, or get eaten by the Maori who lived at the waterfront. He'd done science and a little music at school, before he came here, but neither of them well enough to take up a career. On his way home to his boarding house his only distraction was to check, with a long, thin laboratory thermometer, the temperature levels of the hot pools that dotted the park. Sooner or later he would get away from this place, go back to Hamilton where he grew up. This whole town was just waiting to explode. This apocalyptic view was the main topic of conversation he ever engaged in with Freda.

She steadied herself, took a grip on the edge of the table. ‘Testing, one, two, three,' she said and was surprised that her voice sounded normal in her ears.

‘Stand by,' said David.

‘Good afternoon, shoppers,' she began. ‘In today's programme we bring you an exciting range of what's new around town. We've got brand-new summer knits in vibrant colours in the fashion stores, a uniquely blended line of carpet at the flooring shop and, as a special guest today, we've got the town's newest bookseller, Patrick Trimble, a man who'll tell you all about the author in town, Gary Lord, that Tarzan of the literary world, and much much more.'

So far, so good. Now it was time for David to play a track. Freda found herself crying all the way through Pat Boone singing ‘Love Letters in the Sand'. She must pull herself together. David pushed the studio door open, which was against the station rules, once the programme had started.

‘What is it?' he said. ‘Is there something wrong?'

As if the poor fool was blind. ‘I'm perfectly fine. Get back in that
control room now or I'll have you dismissed. D'you hear me?'

It was a little station, so she didn't have a producer. All she was supposed to do was read the script, sound chirpy, and ask a few questions of enthusiastic retailers. She knew she had overstepped the mark.

The red light flicked on again. ‘Stand by,' David said, his voice croaking with anxiety. Deep breaths. Now she had to talk for a few minutes about the surge of retail activity in the town. This was unbearable, the ugly face of her problem. When she had gone home at lunchtime to pick up her mail, there was the bank statement, the joint account she shared with her husband. Louis (Lou to others) had spent all their money again.

‘What is it this time?' asked Evelyn, as she sat in her dressing gown rubbing cream on her face. There was something cold about the girl, the way she closed her dark eyebrows together when she frowned, and yet Freda loved her so much that it hurt.

Freda had placed her hand over the statement. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.'

‘It can't always be my father's fault,' Evelyn said.

But it was Lou's fault. A little cash here, a bit there, nothing you could point to and say what an extravagance, until you put it all together. Not even some special thing he could exult over. Freda had known money when she was young; it hurt not to have any now. More than that, it was painful to consider how he had spent the money and who had helped him part with it. That was at the heart of the matter.

Now there was time for a short news update, the weather forecast and a pre-recorded commercial. Ten minutes for Freda to weep uninterrupted. David's voice from the control room cut through her sobs, the awful heaving she couldn't seem to stop unless the red light was on.

‘Your guest's here.'

For a moment she had forgotten what her interview was about. She looked at her notes. No, those were from her conversation last week with Ruth Hagley. Don't forget the sandwiches. Cucumber and thin ham, nice brown bread. Never mind the book, in this case it's an
irrelevance. Ruth thought of herself as old but shrewd. Perhaps she was. The new bookseller came in, his hands clasped in front of his light grey suit. This was Patrick Trimble who, in the beginning, everyone said didn't have a show of getting his shop off the ground in opposition to Ruth. But, of course, he was proving them wrong.

When he sat down opposite Freda, the microphone poised between them, he folded her trembling hands in both of his own. ‘My dear Mrs Messenger,' he said. ‘What ever can the matter be? Let me get you a glass of water. No? Well, here, you must have this.' He took out a white folded handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her.

‘Forgive me,' she said, wiping her eyes. ‘So unprofessional. There, it's nothing.'

‘Grief is never over nothing,' he said.

‘I know, but this isn't the place for it.'

‘Surely it doesn't choose a time and place. Grief, I mean. Well, if it did,' he said, stumbling a little, and she could see what a shy and awkward man he really was, but that he had pleasant sad brown eyes, ‘if it did, why then we would choose to be in some other place, some other life. But it's never like that.'

The light was on again. ‘Stand by,' said David, in a low excited squeak, as if he were expecting his anticipated explosion to take place now, at this very moment. A relief from boredom. Freda could see how he hated his job, that he saw himself as a failure. A lot of things were suddenly clear to her, but most of all, that she would live through the next hour, she would advertise and enthuse and sell for her customers, just the way she always did, starting here with Patrick Trimble. ‘Perhaps you would like to begin by telling me about this astonishing book that's taken the country by storm. You've read the book of course?'

‘Of course,' he said, picking up his cue like a professional. In a minute he was talking in a light entertaining way and she knew, with a pang of pity for the woman on the south corner of the street, that his shop was going to do very well, and that she was pleased for him. She put on her dark glasses and leaned forward, nodding her head and letting him do the talking.

When the interview was over, he said, ‘Let me take you to dinner. There's a group of us going down to the café at the lakefront this evening after Gary's been into the shop. Some good friends of mine are determined to cheer me up, because I've been down in the dumps too. Perhaps your husband would like to join us.'

She would like that, she told him, because she hardly ever went out in the evenings and was often on her own. No, she thought her husband might be ‘doing business' this evening, but she would get a chance to see her daughter, Evelyn, because she was working at the Violet Café. Just a fill-in job, but the wages were quite good. She would be going on to better things soon.

‘I understand,' Patrick said. ‘I'd heard your daughter was a clever girl.' The young people leaving town for their education made him pine for his own university days, he explained, warming to his theme. That had been a long time ago.

‘Everything was a long time ago,' Freda said, miserable again. ‘Everything that mattered.'

T
HE
B
OOK
P
ARTY

Jessie walked through the town with little curiosity at first, for she didn't intend to stay long. A red brick bank occupied one street corner. A young man wearing a suit emerged, his face merry, an attaché case in one hand, a football in the other, almost dancing as he descended the stairs. As soon as he hit the street, he drop-kicked the ball a short way and ran to catch it. A woman across the road waved to him and he hesitated and waved back. He looked up and down the street as if reminded of something or someone, almost as if he was being followed, then resumed his journey down the street in a quieter fashion, his expression thoughtful. Opposite the bank stood a milk bar. Girls in tight skirts and spiked heels leaned against dark-skinned youths in leather jackets. A youngish man in a suit, with a Bible in
one hand, was offering them pamphlets. One of the swarthy boys took one and made a lazy paper dart that flickered momentarily above his head and fell at the feet of the preacher, who appeared not to notice this desecration of the Word.

Suddenly a commotion erupted as the town began to close down in the late afternoon. The noise Jessie heard issued forth from one of the town's bookshops. It looked as if a scrum had developed, the sort Jessie associated with the department store on sale day, people shoving and elbowing each other aside as if anxious they might miss the very last item. A huge banner hung from the bookshop roof, right down over the street. GARY LORD COMES TO TOWN — ALL WELCOME the sign read in three-foot letters. Gary, shouted voices. Over here, over here. A man with tousled hair and a roll-your-own cigarette hanging from his lip sat at a table in the centre of the melée, a young woman with large eyes clutching his arm or handfuls of air when he moved away. The man was signing books with such speed that once the signature had been received the recipient was ejected from the shop by the force of the crowd pushing forward to replace them in the queue. On the footpath, these people were forming a small throng, wondering what to do next. Then someone turned and began walking further along the street to what turned out to be the next bookshop. The others began to follow. Jessie could see from the street that the second shop was more or less deserted, except for a tall older woman, and another one of indeterminate age with pink cheeks and a flustered expression, who was fussing over food laid out on the counter. A short row of the famous author's books were lined up across a centre shelf in the window, between textbooks on the bottom shelf and some romantic novels with bright swooning covers on the top.

The book buyers from along the street bore down on the shop, clutching their parcels and talking at the top of their voices. Jessie followed them inside as they swept through the doors, hardly seeming to notice the proprietor or her assistant, and began attacking the sandwiches.

‘What can I get you?' the older woman asked, in an unfriendly voice.

‘Nothing,' said Jessie.

‘I don't sell nothing,' the woman said.

‘Mother, let it go,' said the other. ‘I'll stay and help you clear up when they've finished.'

For hours, Jessie had been aching with hunger. She considered going into the milk bar and ordering a milkshake but decided against it. She wasn't afraid, she felt different. Her reflection followed her down the long mile of shop fronts. A man closing the doors of what appeared to be a sports goods and fishing tackle shop, turned and half whistled, a low sizzling sound between his teeth. His mouth was strong and curved, and his colouring was not unlike that of the young Maori men outside the milk bar, but a lighter shade of copper. He wasn't tall, but dapper in that chunky middle-aged way that happens to handsome men. He wore a brown hairy jacket, moleskin pants, a small hat tilted over his eye. She met his glance without meaning to, and saw the beginning of a smile. An older woman might have thought him vulnerable.

This was the man with whom Jessie fell briefly into conversation, the one who suggested that if she were looking for a bite to eat, she could do no better than the Violet Café, down another block and turn left.

T
HE
W
AITRESS

The café was situated in a white stucco and wood building on the edge of a lake. The address was Number 8, Lake Road. A green picket fence surrounded a garden of white daisies beneath a magnolia tree, its lemony-scented cups of bloom, speckled with recent rain, so perfectly formed that Jessie found them almost heart-rending. At the end of the path a black door with a brass knocker stood ajar. Jessie pushed it open because the sign outside and the smell of garlic promised food. At once, she found herself in a large L-shaped open space that seemed to be full of reflected light, for a part of the room was flanked by french doors that opened onto a verandah facing the lake. A woman sat behind a low reception desk, her head bent over a large reservations book.

She was an older woman, dressed in an impeccably tailored navy-blue linen dress that might have looked mannish had it not been for the drawn threadwork across her breast. There were no rings on her fingers but she wore a heavy silver bracelet on her right wrist and a square-faced watch on the left. The woman looked Jessie up and down, a slight contempt lurking in her cool blue gaze.

‘I have no vacancies,’ the woman said, before Jessie had a chance
to speak. Her astonishing hair, the colour of a pale hydrangea head, was drawn up in a chignon, giving the effect of a halo of flowers or blue smoke. On the dark wooden bench stood a small sign bearing the name ‘Violet Trench’.

It registered then with Jessie that she had passed another sign outside which read VACANCIES, APPLY WITHIN. She placed a tan leather suitcase on the floor beside her. Stamped with the words ‘Warranted Bullockhide’, it had brass clasps, white saddle stitching around the handle — it was the same one her mother had carried on both her honeymoons. She said; ‘I haven’t come about a job.’

At the far end of the café, a young man with slanted almond-shaped eyes, and wearing a striped apron tied over his impossibly slim hips, stood in front of an upright piano. He fingered the keys idly, nothing more than a line of scales. His gaze rested on Violet Trench and although he appeared very young, and she was not a young woman, there was a lurking heat about the way he looked at her. Jessie, glancing away from the woman’s insistent eyes, saw that the whole café was white, broken only by stained wooden ceiling beams and the polished lacquered surfaces of a dozen or so tables, and chairs made of black wrought iron. The tables were laid with dark green place mats with raffish fringed edges, and modern stainless-steel cutlery. Alongside Violet Trench’s name on its stand stood a small cut-glass vase containing a clutch of white violets, and straight away, Jessie thought, how clever, how unexpected. White violets, even though the woman herself was blue from head to foot, except for her fine lined skin and a hint of pale lipstick.

‘I usually depend on word of mouth,’ said the woman, and shrugged slightly, leaving it there.

‘But it’s early in the season,’ said Jessie.

‘I may have someone starting tomorrow. I should have taken the sign down earlier.’

‘You could do worse than me,’ Jessie said. ‘I’m used to waiting on people.’

‘Tables?’

‘China department,’ Jessie told her, naming the Wellington store.

‘You can’t eat china.’

‘You like it though,’ Jessie said. ‘Nice china.’

The woman looked her over again, her eyebrows raised. Jessie almost turned away, seeing herself through her eyes. Five foot eleven, thin as a broom, with a flat chest. Her hands had always seemed disproportionately large, compared with her wrists and ankles, her skin pale beneath its mosaic of freckles. Although she wore her long hair pulled back from her face and clasped with combs on either side of her head, curly tendrils, the colour of gingerbread, escaped round her face. She wore a duffel coat over a red jersey and a pleated black and green skirt. Her legs were clad in red stockings, her feet in black buckled sandals.

‘I don’t take on complicated girls,’ Violet Trench said. ‘Not if I can help it. Let me look at your fingernails.’

Jessie laid her hands out on the counter. ‘Clean enough?’

‘Soft. This is hard work.’

Jessie straightened herself. What on earth was she thinking of? ‘I didn’t come about a job. I wanted something to eat. Although I thought this was a coffee bar.’

‘We have a continental influence here — we serve meals. Anyway, we’re fully booked.’

‘Then who’s taking Belle’s place tonight?’ The young man had abandoned the piano, and approached cat-like, to hover in a shadow just to the side of a slanting band of light.

For an instant Violet’s composure seemed about to desert her. ‘Oh, what’s wrong with Belle tonight?’ she asked on a long exhaled breath. ‘No, don’t tell me, I don’t think I could stand to hear it again.’

The sky, which had seemed thin and watery when Jessie was out on the street, was turning purple, a dangerous eerie light. Violet turned to Jessie. ‘Ten shillings for the night. Cash. Don’t tell me you’re not interested — it will give you something to do for the evening, something to write down in your notebook. Oh, it’s all right, I saw you for what you were as soon as you walked in: a poor university student on the lookout. Make some notes, write an essay about it —
my night in the provinces, how quaint we all are. What did you say your name was?’

And when she told her, the woman looked pleased in a way Jessie couldn’t read. John, the young man in the apron, took Jessie’s suitcase as if she were a hostage.

‘Give her something to eat,’ Violet instructed him, and turned back to her reservations book as if there were nothing further to discuss.

‘This is the kitchen,’ John said. Pristine counters gleamed in two rows before her. A large pot simmered on the stove. On one side, the food preparation had begun, little mounds of uncooked ingredients stacked side by side in china bowls: potatoes pared of their skins, mushrooms with their spiny hearts gutted and open, staring at the ceiling with their one vacant eye, a satin-red capsicum and moss-like mounds of parsley and thyme. In a separate glass bowl she saw what looked like three lumps of coal covered in warts.

Gently touching one of these, John said, ‘One of the rarest ingredients in the world, pity they’re so ugly.’ He lifted the lid of the pot. ‘See this chicken, it’s got morsels of them packed under its skin. We’ll serve this chicken cooled a little as an entrée, with a touch of mayonnaise.’

‘What are those things?’

‘Truffles.’

‘Where do they come from?’

He touched the side of his nose with his finger and gave a little whinny of laughter. ‘That’s the secret. You’d have to ask the pigs. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’

It was true, of course, she didn’t understand a thing. This sweet-looking funny young man, with his slightly bookish way of speaking, made no sense to her at all.

‘Truffles are a type of little fungus that grows underground on the roots of oak trees. They smell very strong, like perfume I think, although you might disagree. The farmers use pigs to smell them out when they’re ripe. You send a sow after them, and the smell of a black truffle is the same as that of a boar, so the sow goes on heat when she’s
looking for truffles, wondering where her lover is hiding.’

‘So they’re under just any old oak trees?’ She did know about truffles. Third-year French, after you’d learnt the nouns and the grammar. There was no harm in having him on a little too.

‘Oh no. Not at all.’ He looked alarmed and evasive, as if he had given away far too much. ‘Truffles come from France. Mrs Trench lived in France and Italy, so she has European ideas about cooking — not that the peasants round here have a clue. We have to cater for everyone in this backwater.’

‘But you’ve got truffles all the same.’

‘Tins,’ he said, ‘Mrs Trench’s father was in tin canning. About the dishes — that’s what Belle does, washes dishes — it’s a complicated job. You have to have enough pans ready when we cook. It’s not the plates that matter most, the customers can wait a few minutes but the cook must have four pans on the go at once, and soon you’ll need even more. I’m in charge of the kitchen here.’ He stopped, correcting himself. ‘Hester and I, that is.’ Jessie sensed reluctance, as if he would rather be in sole charge. ‘I can’t take it if there aren’t enough pans. They’re the top priority, you understand.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good, I can’t cook without them. Will some scrambled eggs do?’

‘Thank you,’ she said. The sense of having been captured was growing stronger. He led her back into the restaurant, showing her a seat. Something filmy clung to him, the smell of garlic and a feeling of heat. Jessie had never been in love though she had thought of love’s possibilities. Only, whenever she did, she thought of her mother and felt desolated. Her mother had once told to her that she was not to worry if she didn’t get married. You’re clever, darling, that will see you through.

Jessie took the table beside the window John had taken her to, and gazed out at the darkening lake. While she waited for her food, she looked at a menu, even though she hadn’t been offered one:

Soup of the day

Entrées

Foie de Volaille au Beurre

Chicken livers delicately sautéed in butter

Fritot de Cervelles

Fritters made of brains marinated in lemon juice, cooked in a pale ale batter

Quiche au Crabe

A delicately flavoured crab quiche

Mains

Fish of the Day

Tournedos Henry iv

Fillet steak served with sauce béarnaise, accompanied by French fried potatoes and salad

Escalopes a la Crème

A melt in the mouth veal fillet, served with cream and flaming brandy

Coq au vin

Violet especially recommends this classic chicken dish, made with mushrooms and tiny onions.

We use only the finest cognac

Desserts

Crème Brulée

It speaks for itself, ours is incomparable

Tarte Framboise

Please do not ask our waiting staff for wine.

Sadly, it is illegal to sell alcohol on these premises. C’est Nouvelle Zélande. Bon appétit.

It seemed that one must be in the know to ask for truffles.

C
HEFS

John had propped open the swing door between the kitchen and the dining room, so that he could see the girl. She was like an awkward gazelle, and he found himself liking her without knowing why.

From the moment he began working here, John felt he fitted into the Violet Café. He felt half in love with the woman who employed him, although he couldn’t explain this to himself, didn’t understand why he liked to be near her. It was important that he pleased her because she was the best thing that had happened to him so far. She treated him more like a business partner than her cook. The business had grown from two or three of them, including Hester, to a staff of six. There were days when he wondered whether Violet hadn’t let the business become too big, because the girls who worked there were a lot to handle. But difficult rebellious girls were the kind Violet seemed to like having around her, as if she could mould them into something different.

And, looking out of the shadowy kitchen, he guessed that Jessie was about to be subjected to the same kind of makeover, although Violet would have been more inclined to describe it as a chance to make the best of herself. Something more than physical appearance, a remoulding of the spirit, as had happened to him when he came to work for Violet. Now that he’d been remade though, he’d begun to wonder whether all his life would be spent cooking at the Violet Café. He didn’t want admit to his sense of restlessness but, just lately, in the moments before sleep, a question had been flashing through his brain. What happens next?

She’s too gullible, John thought, engulfed by a wave of tenderness for the girl with her pale face and freckles, her wrinkled tan hair. She needs someone to look after her.

This was the moment when Jessie might have got up and left,
when she could have gone to the kitchen and demanded that her suitcase be handed over at once, and turned and gone back the way she had come. But already she knew that she didn’t want to go back. It was the moment, too, for John to return with a dish of scrambled eggs, sprinkled with croutons, and a small yellow glazed bowl of salad. He placed a glass beside her plate and half-filled it with golden wine, poured from a china teapot. She felt a thrill, a frisson of something illegal. When he laid the food on the table, John’s fingers looked like bamboo stems. The scrambled eggs were stained with some unidentifiable flecks, the texture of mushrooms. Each mouthful was accompanied by a scent, like nuts, or musk, perhaps like vanilla, or again, something darker and earthier, more like buried rubbish, which would have made her recoil had she not been so ravenous. She felt dreamy, as if she had been drugged. You heard of things happening to girls when they went travelling. Carefully she sipped the cold unaccustomed wine; it ran like a sweet riff beneath her breast bone.

‘You like that?’ asked John, hovering over her. Shouldn’t he have been out in the kitchen?

‘It tastes strange,’ she said, ‘not like scrambled eggs.’


Les
truffaux
. They smell sexy, don’t they?’ His accent wasn’t French, but not exactly Kiwi either. Each word was perfect, yet sly with long vowels, as if he were mimicking language itself.

‘You mean I’m eating those black things?’ Although of course she knew without asking.

BOOK: Songs from the Violet Cafe
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