‘Well, I like it here too,’ I said to annoy her. ‘We should do this more often. I like the company of the working man. Good, honest folk, enjoying their time for reflection after a hard week in the jar factory.’
‘You always get a deadly scrap in here,’ Frank said. ‘Last week me and me mate, right, saw these two scumbags we know, and we go up to them, straight in with the dujj, and bop! I loaf one of them and then I see his mate’s got me mate on the ground and he’s stampin on his head, so I grab this bottle, and smash, right between the fuckin eyes. The both of them fuckin legged it.’
I absorbed this silently.
‘I was just laughin,’ Frank added.
‘Aha,’ I said.
‘That’s one of the cunts there,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘See that cunt sittin at the bar? The poxy little fuck? That’s one of the cunts we done.’
The cunt in question was a short man with a crew-cut and a long fresh scar down his jaw. As Frank spoke he turned his head slowly in our direction. An interchange of baleful stares ensued. Caught in the middle, I rubbed my nose and coughed and was beginning to hyperventilate when, mercifully, the cunt bowed his head. Frank snorted victoriously. Bel let out a worried coo.
‘Ah, don’t mind him,’ Frank assured her. ‘Sure he’s only a cunt. Anyway if there was any bother you’d have Charlie and me to protect you, wouldn’t you?’
‘Ha ha,’ I said, but this was my cue to go. ‘Look, I forgot, I have to, um…’
‘See a man about a dog?’ Frank chortled, the meaning of which escaped me; Bel smirked triumphantly as I put on my topcoat and hastened outside in a cold sweat to hail a cab.
It was a long ride back, and at the door I bade farewell to a sizeable portion of my winnings. But I didn’t care, it was such a relief to be home: I closed the door and leaned back against it thankfully. The rich aroma of cooking floated up to me, and I went into the kitchen, where Mrs P was just that minute taking a tray of cinnamon buns out of the oven, piping hot with the sugar frosting still sizzling on their golden tops. My entrance took her by surprise — in fact she practically jumped out of her skin, only this time the tray acted as ballast.
‘Buns,’ I said, ignoring this. ‘I’ll just pinch one, if I may —’
‘Hmm yes,’ she recovered in time to swerve nimbly away, moving the tray just out of my reach, ‘but Master Charles, they are for your dear mother in hospital.’
‘She won’t mind,’ I said, deftly stepping around to her tray side.
She reversed. ‘Now Charles, please to think of your poor mother.’
‘Look, give me a bun,’ I said bluntly.
Pursing her lips, she proffered the tray. Tearing off a mouthful of delicious steaming sponge, I remembered my plan to save Mrs P’s failing mental health through love. ‘So,’ I said, chewing and swallowing, ‘what’s it like in that place, anyway?’
‘What?’ she said.
‘You know, where you’re from,’ I said, taking another bun. They really were very good. She hadn’t made cinnamon buns in ages.
‘Well…’ she frowned. ‘It was very nice, yes. When I was a little girl. Now, of course, there are many troubles.’
‘But it was nice when you were little, eh?’ I said.
She put the buns on the counter behind her and folded her arms meditatively. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, and her expression quite changed, making her look twenty years younger, her amber eyes taking on a happy, nostalgic glaze not unlike two frosted cinnamon buns. ‘When I was little, we lived in the country. My father was a painter and the house is filled always with the loveliest colours. Each day my sister and I bring wild flowers home for him to paint —’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, as this line of questioning didn’t show much promise. ‘But it’s in a bad way now, is it? Lots of explosions, houses burning down, sort of thing? Like on the news?’
‘Now,’ frowning down at the ground, ‘everything is changed. Like you cannot even think. The explosion may stop, the burning, but… like this plate,’ she picked up one of Mother’s Wedgwood dinner-set from the dresser and traced her finger around the intricate design on the rim, ‘if I drop, is gone. Smash up into little pieces. You can glue it together, but the pattern, that leads into itself at every place, is still broken, disappears for ever. Houses and families, friends who talk at the market, children who sing and shout in the street, men who build, eat sandwiches in sunshine, look at pretty girls — all pattern lost and disappear like —’
‘Well don’t break the plate,’ I said hurriedly, snatching it from her upheld hand. Midnight breakfasts were one thing, but wilful plate-breaking was another matter entirely. Really the woman seemed quite disturbed. Possibly I ought to call the chap at the Cedars to come and have a look at her. ‘What about your family?’ I said, attempting to lead her on to more peaceful topics that might be less of a threat to the crockery. ‘What about them?’
She was about to reply, but halted and regarded me curiously. ‘Why do you ask me this?’
‘No reason. Just, you know, I don’t know much about you. Seems odd, doesn’t it? I mean you live here —’
‘Many, many questions,’ she said.
‘Well, global village, you know, hands across the sea, what —’
She didn’t understand. ‘Many questions,’ she mused to herself, then looking back at me said in an unfamiliar, bitter tone, ‘in Yugoslavia, men come with questions. Is not good, when they come.’
So I was the secret police now, was I? ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you can just answer the question, or not. Tell me about your wretched family or don’t. I don’t care. I’m just trying to be nice. I know all about it already. I watch the news.’
‘You want to know about my family?’ she shouted angrily. ‘Fine. Five years ago, my husband is architect, I give the legal aid, we have two sons in university and a girl who wants to be famous actress. Now there is nothing. House gone, money, we hide and we run —’ She covered her face with her apron. Little cotton ducklings danced up and down where her nose had been.
I hadn’t even known she had children. ‘Where are they?’ I asked, as gently as I could.
‘ — and now I cook you buns!’ Mrs P sobbed, and ran out of the room.
What could I do? I couldn’t follow her; she was the help, after all; her personal life wasn’t really any of my business. Possibly paying attention to Mrs P hadn’t been such a good idea after all. We truly didn’t know the first thing about her — she’d just turned up one day, responding to an advertisement that had, we discovered subsequently, mysteriously appeared in the window of the local newsagent. As it happened, though, Mother had been thinking of getting a new maid, the last one, a fetching little French au pair, having left some months before following a misunderstanding with Pongo McGurks at our Christmas party — perfectly innocent, of course, but you know au pairs. And so Mrs P had joined the household. By then Father was already very sick, and no one had ever got around to asking her about her past. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that she might have preferred it that way.
Pensively I ate another bun, then took the tray up to Father’s study. I ate tentatively; one could no longer be sure of the cooking’s soundness, that was the thing. They tasted fine, but who knew what madness might throw into the mixing bowl? And if not now, what of breakfast tomorrow? Elevenses? Lunch? Tea? Dinner? Supper? And the day after that, the deadly game of Russian roulette would continue, with each spoonful another spin of the chamber…