Songs from the Violet Cafe Read online

  The fair man splashed through the water and climbed on board. ‘See ya later, Harry,’ he called back to his friend. In a moment, the boat roared away from the shore, as they headed back to town.

  ‘Owen, this is Jessie,’ John said, introducing them.

  ‘Oh yeah, I’ve heard about you,’ Owen replied, his eyes resting on her, his expression not entirely friendly. His glance strayed to Marianne, sitting in the cockpit laughing at something Lou had said. Things seemed to be back to normal between them.

  ‘Jessie’s all right,’ John said, putting an arm protectively around her shoulders. Surprised by this embrace, she let his arm rest, finding herself calm within its circle. She wondered what had made her afraid. They were all acting as if something had threatened them, and now they were working in concert to drive the thing away. Owen looked from John to Jessie. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘okay.’

  ‘You and my brother getting things sorted out?’ John asked.

  ‘Sure. The wedding’s going to be fine. Harry’s new house is looking good, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s doing all right,’ John said. ‘I might move in with him yet.’

  ‘Sam wouldn’t like that, would he?’

  ‘Well, it might be a bit far to bike to work. Pays to have plenty of brothers, you can pick and choose your lodgings.’ Lou had notched the motor up, and the boat began to fly along at a breathtaking pace, the waves going bang bang bang beneath them. John’s arm tightened around Jessie.

  ‘Did you say that was your brother?’ Jessie shouted above the noise of the engine. ‘Yes, that’s Chun, but you can call him Harry. I live with Sam, the next one down.’

  ‘But I thought Hugo was your father. The old man who died.’

  ‘He was. My mother was Ming, and Harry is one of the sons she had in China before her first husband died.’

  ‘I didn’t realise.’

  ‘That I was a Chinaman?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  He took his arm away. She wanted to say that it was all right, she didn’t mean it in a way that might offend him, but she couldn’t find the right words. Her face was smarting with the wind on her sunburned cheeks, and with embarrassment. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t seen what was different about John before.

  JOHN

  They’d called him a pansy and threatened to cut off his balls, holding him against trees with their arms across his throat, blocking his windpipe, until he cried, in spite of himself, while girls stayed away from him, as if in deference to the masculinity of the boys they hung about with. He couldn’t work it out, because he hadn’t felt anything for anyone. He knew boys who fagged for prefects. One of them wore a cape, and sat on the knees of sixth-form boys with his arm around their necks, and everyone laughed. John never wanted to do that.

  He tried to see himself as they saw him. The mirror showed him a fragile girlish beauty he couldn’t change. You’re a clever boy, his English teacher said. The mathematics teacher said, you should specialise with us. You’ve got the brains. You ought to be a scholarship pupil, the principal said. When his school reports came out he tore them up. They’re too dumb, he said. You don’t want to know what they think of me, he told his father. Only one day his father, who thought they must be getting it all wrong, took it on himself to go down and ask how his son was doing.

  John couldn’t forget the night his father came home, his face like whey.

  ‘Why?’ he said, ‘What makes you tell me lies? Why do you want to squander your life in this way?’

  ‘People don’t like me at school,’ he said, after a long silence, because something was required of him.

  His father had studied him intently. This father of his was very old, and had four sons — two stepsons from his wife’s first marriage, his own older brother and himself — but none of them were like him. They were sturdy men on the whole, although his younger brother Joe, the one who should have been close to him, had trouble reading and writing and had been taken out of school when he was thirteen. He was a huge overgrown boy, nearly a foot taller than John, who stayed at home and dug whole paddocks by hand in an afternoon, lifting the earth as easily as if he was shifting dust. Strong in one sense then, although you couldn’t hold a conversation with him. John wished he didn’t feel ashamed of his family. His father had taught him many things when he was small that seemed to have escaped other boys his own age. In the evenings Hugo played recordings of Schubert’s music on a shaky turntable, although John believed he could no longer hear the notes, and the boy knew that the music was intended for him. Mostly, he pretended he couldn’t hear it either, sat whistling through his teeth, or staring at the ceiling, thinking how awful it would be if anyone could hear the music his father chose. He couldn’t meet his father’s eyes when he found out how he’d been cheating on him.

  ‘Fuck,’ said his brother. ‘Fuckfuck. They want John to do fuckfuck.’

  His father had stood up, ready to lash out at his huge son, but one of the older sons, Harry, in his thirties then, who lived next door with his wife and children, put out his hand and held him back.

  ‘You want to listen to him, old man,’ he said. ‘The boy knows a thing or two.’

  ‘Is it true, then?’ his father asked John.

  ‘No,’ said John. ‘Yes, perhaps that’s what they want, but not me. That’s not what I want. It’s not what I do.’ Although, in his heart, he knew that if he stayed there much longer, he would have to do it whether he wanted to or not.

  ‘I can send you away to school,’ said his father. ‘Boarding school.’

  ‘It would be the same there,’ John said. ‘It would be the same wherever I went.’

  It was after that his father said he had a job for him to go to: the woman who ran the new café at the end of the main street in town was looking for someone to work in the kitchen. She could give him an apprenticeship. When he told John this, he had to squeeze his eyes tightly together as if to stop tears leaking down the seamy old parchment of his face; as if he had done the very best he could and felt that he’d failed.

  ‘It’s only as important as you let it be,’ John said. ‘Being one thing or another. Being Chinese. If you don’t like it, go out with someone else.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Jessie said. ‘I should have known. Your father told me I should go to China.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes, he did. But then my mother said that too. I thought it was just something people said.’

  SPRUNG

  Up in the ranges, on a road that led through thick native forest towards town, Freda’s small Prefect car had broken down. The problem was probably the carburettor, she and Evelyn decided. Evelyn flagged down a car and asked the driver to ring her father when he got into town, and send help.

  The motorist did ring Lou Messenger, but he was not there. The man who answered the phone had just overturned a tray of trout flies and his mind was not on the call. Lou, he believed, was out showing clients some fishing trips around the lake. As soon as he came in, he said, he would give him the message. Only Lou didn’t come in for the rest of the day, and besides, the man forgot about the call.

  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 go
es 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.’