‘Thought you could make a tart out of them,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ he said, frowning hard at the pears — it seemed important to look interested in the fruit. Amy blinked and shifted her weight under the box. The chewing gum cracked in her mouth.
A woman came in wearing a hat and gloves, and frowned deeply when she saw Amy in her overalls. She averted her eyes and said, ‘Four rock cakes and a white loaf, please.’ And her eyes flickered across to Amy again, the corners of her mouth turned down. Leon put her bread in a bag and counted out her change. He could see Amy smiling with her box of pears, she was standing tall and straight, and she didn’t move when the woman tried to make out that she was in her way. She just smiled wider and the woman stared back at him like she wanted him to say something. Leon looked away. She marched out of the shop, her handbag hung in the crook of her arm. Amy rolled her eyes and he smiled.
‘Um, you think I could put this down somewhere?’ He fumbled from behind the counter and tried to take the box from her. Putting his hands underneath it, he trapped her finger under his, and remembered the day at school with Briony Caldwell and the secret up yours. Amy Blackwell looked him in the eye and he shifted again and had the box, but all that was in his head was the smell of her, earth, gum, sweat and old pears. The coldness of her finger clamped under his.
She brushed a hair off her forehead. ‘Ta,’ she said. ‘Haven’t seen you around school in a while.’
‘Stopped going. I pretty much run this place now.’
‘How’s that?’
‘’Sgood, thanks.’
‘Great.’
‘Yep.’ Leon shifted his weight under the box.
‘Well… see youse later then…’
He stood clutching the pears, feeling like a handicapped. He should have given her a piece of cake. He should have offered her a drink, she looked hot and tired. He should have called the woman that gave her a dirty look an old cow and he should have looked happier about the pears and he should have got her to stay longer, asked her out for his imaginary birthday drinks. But the smell, the fug of pear and dirt and spearmint, made a change in the room. Something like light, like white fresh icing. Amy’s spearmint gum cleared all the tubes and passages inside him, and the cold dark something had gone from the door, he’d felt it leave. He blinked a few times as the feeling faded. The warm smell of bread and cake seemed stronger, like he hadn’t realised it before. It was a lovely smell.
On a piece of newspaper he squeezed sugar roses and thought about what he would say the next time she came into the shop. He paid more attention to his work, he perfected his cherry slices, took minute care about the placement, the overlap of strawberries on the gateau, the thickness of the gelatin glaze. He thought about how he would present them to her if she ever came in again with her light like sun in a copper pan.
His mother fitted her hair bun back in place, always wet from a bath. She bothered Leon now and again about going back to school. ‘There’s more to life than just cakes and sweets,’ she’d say, but then would trail off as if something else had caught her attention. She’d rub her eyes and blink, then smile at him and walk into the back room where he would hear her looking through the bookshelves, flipping through the books one by one, picking things up and putting them down again, finding herself extra housework before the next bath time.
At the malt bar the kids dressed up like Yanks with spit in their hair and the girls had tits like paper hats. On his day off Leon passed the place by and went into the pub where, if he sat with a cherry soda for long enough, the barman would serve him a glass of beer. ‘Cos I can see you’re a drinker,’ he said as he put it down. ‘But anyone asks and you’re pinching dregs.’
The men at the bar were dangerous-looking sorts, some missing a limb or two, one who only had a thumb and little finger left on his right hand, and he would press the thumb up to his nose and point at people.
That slow thick feeling crept up on him often, but it was all right in the pub. It didn’t seem out of place that his mouth moved ten times slower than everyone else’s when he talked, and after a drink the feeling just melted into the alcohol and no one could tell the difference anyway, because they were concentrating on getting the grog inside them before the pub closed. When he swayed to the toilets, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, no one looked at him funny. When he returned, the man with the lobster claw slapped him on the back and handed him another drink, without ever turning to look at him or stopping his conversation with his friend.
‘Thank you,’ said Leon clearly and he slowed himself back to his seat.
Amy Blackwell did come again and this time she brought plums. He had been making the curd for a lemon tart, grating in the rind of a green lemon stroke by stroke and tasting in between. When the bell rang he barely broke his rhythm. ‘Beauty,’ he said, as he took the box of plums from her.
‘How’s it goin’?’ she asked.
‘Good,’ he said, this time really looking at the plums, knocking one of them on to its back, feeling it give. They were the dark purple type and he thought of upside-down caramel plum tarts.
He got her some water and, with one hand leaning on the counter, she drained the glass and put it down heavily on the side, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.
‘How’s school going?’ he asked, as she put down the glass.
‘It’s dumb and nuts,’ she answered, smiling, chewing her spearmint. ‘They reckon they want us to learn how to iron.’
He moved back to the bowl. ‘You’ve come in the nick of time,’ he said. The room was rousing itself into a glow, he felt it at the back of his head, the lightness, the clearing. It made him stand straight, breathe deeply. He picked up a twist of pastry to dip it into the curd and absently wiped a finger round the outside edge of the bowl, collecting a stray thread of yellow that had trailed over the side. He offered her the pastry and the glow off her was sun off water. She leant forward but passed the pastry twist and took the other hand, holding it in both of hers. She put his lemon-covered finger in her mouth, standing on tiptoe over the counter. His breath stayed in his chest and a breeze came into the shop, and he could smell the lemon and the plums and the scent of the skin of her throat.
She looked at him the way she had when he’d caught her finger under the crate of pears. That finger raised behind the sheet of paper at school. She drew her lips to the tip of his finger, letting them make a pop sound at the end. ‘’S pretty nice,’ she said, dropping back on to her heels and wiping her mouth with the inside of her wrist. The shop bell rang and she left him, finger still held in mid-air, eyes round and big, the room a white flash in her wake.
Later that week he took a plum crumble and two spoons round to Blackwell’s Grocers. They ate it in the dark of the storeroom, among the potato mud and the huntsman spiders, where even her breath smelt of wet earth. He could see the silhouette of her like a halo, and he put out a hand to touch the light on her hair and heard the unzipping of her overalls. The top of his nose prickled when she touched his skin, the warmth of her belly on his. She was hot inside so that he thought it might burn him but the white light that burst was cool and clearing like a swim in the sea. She laughed between deep breaths. They chewed gum afterwards, and there was the simple fact of it popping and cracking in the darkness, the white gum in their dark mouths.
‘I like it here with you,’ he said.