Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

14. What If?

‘One does something and perhaps has no idea what it was that was done. Then much later there comes suddenly the understanding — Aha! So that’s what it was.’ Katerina had put it very well. I recognised that my night with her had been only incidentally a sexual matter; obviously she represented to me some kind of female power that I wanted on my side; I didn’t know what I was to her and could only hope that her needs had in some way coincided with mine.

Trying not to think too much about my deficiencies I headed for the Vegemania, hoping for a sighting of Serafina. The shop opened at ten, the restaurant not till twelve; it was quarter to eleven now and she’d be getting ready for the lunchtime rush.

As I walked through the faces coming towards me and past me I noted again how many of them seemed eager to get to wherever they were going. This morning I too was eager to get to where I was going but not only because I expected to see Serafina; no, I was just eager to get to the next part of the first day of the rest of my life. Odd, how exciting and vivid and valuable my contractually short life seemed now. All of my senses were sharpened and crossing over from one to another — I tasted the Octoberness of the day in my mouth, saw the colours of passing footsteps and the other sounds around me, heard in my vision the approach of November, smelled possibilities that swarmed like golden bees, held in my hands … what? Ah! I said to myself, be patient and you’ll see.

Yes! She was there. Through the window I saw Rima, one of the waitresses, setting tables. Beyond her I had brief and partial glimpses of Serafina passing and repassing the kitchen doorway. She was in jeans and a mauve jumper with the sleeves pushed up, her black hair held back by a leopard-spotted scarf worn as a headband, her whole throwaway manner wildly erotic as always. The scarf was one we’d bought in the Boulevard Saint-Michel on the day we drank the sauvignon in the Place des Vosges.

With my heart pounding I went through the hallway with its bulletin board of mental, physical and spiritual opportunities, through the empty stripped-pine tables and chairs of the restaurant, and into the kitchen where the luncheon menu in various stages of readiness was deployed in pots and bowls and dishes and on boards and trays. Zoë, the other waitress, was chopping tofu. Patsy Cline was coming over the sound system with ‘Crazy’:

Crazy — I’m crazy for feelin’ so lonely,

I’m crazy, crazy for feelin’ so blue.

I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted,

and then someday you’d leave me for somebody new.

Serafina, with her look of howling into the wind on a bleak northern strand, was peeling onions with tears running down her cheeks. I would have liked to kiss them away but knew better than to try. When she saw me she fired off a black-browed glance that warned me to keep my distance. ‘What?’ she said.

‘What a warm and friendly greeting!’

‘You’ve had all the warm and friendly you’re getting from me, mate. This is a small kitchen and we need your space.’

‘I don’t know where you’re living now.’ When I said that, Zoé glanced up from her tofu and I remembered that she’d been looking for a flatmate a few weeks ago.

‘You don’t need to know,’ said Serafina. ‘You can forward mail and messages to me here.’

‘Are you going to stay angry for ever?’

‘When you say “you” you’re talking to the woman you used to live with. She’s not around any more. This woman you’re talking to now is somebody else who hasn’t got time for your whingeing.’

She was a proud person and I could feel how humiliating it must have been for her to find those letters. How would I have felt if she’d had such letters from another man? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I’d be full of the same rage and disgust that was coming from her in waves. Still, she was the woman I’d had the oasis dream with and we both knew nothing could change that. ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘how you’d feel tomorrow if you were to hear that I was dead.’

She’d done with the onions for the moment; she wiped her eyes, took a knife and slit open a plastic bag of peeled potatoes. Her hands were strong and shapely, with long nimble fingers; whatever she took hold of she held in a good-looking way and her cooking was pleasing to the eye at every stage: the peeled onions, the bag of flour, the pot of salt, the box of eggs, the chopping board, tablespoon and little black-handled knife were a choreographed still-life that changed from moment to moment. ‘I’d probably feel about the same as I do now —’ she said, ‘cheated because I’d been giving all of me while you were giving only part of you and now my honest time would be gone with your lying time. If you were going to be a shit you should have let me know in advance.’

‘I didn’t know I was going to be a shit.’

‘Then when you felt it coming on, you should have told me so I could leave while I still had good things to remember. That would have been simple enough; if you’d found out that you’d got AIDS from someone you knew before me you’d have had the decency to tell me. I’m the woman you dreamed the oasis dream with, the woman you said was your destiny woman, but that wasn’t enough for you. Can you tell me why it wasn’t enough? I really would like to know because that’s a great big gap in my understanding. Tell me, Jonathan — speak.’

I tried to think of something useful to say but I couldn’t.

‘Nothing to say, Jonathan? In one of those letters in your pocket one of your bits on the side said, “What we have between us is something special, Jonny.” Well, now you can have a special thing with as many as you like without having to lie about it.’

She started putting potatoes into the electric grater. Through her alchemy these humble things out of the earth, compounded with onions, eggs, flour and salt, would sizzle as golden-brown pancakes on the griddle of their transformation. They would smell of their ingredients but beyond that they would smell of fidelity, of being steadfast and true to what really mattered. I couldn’t help salivating a little. And all the while her movements had been revealing the subtle roundnesses of her that one didn’t notice at first glance. ‘Serafina,’ I said. ‘I never stopped loving you.’

‘I’m thrilled to hear that — it’s very flattering to know that you had a little room in your heart for me. You must be a very big-hearted man.’

Again I had no words. I wanted so much to take her in my arms!

‘What?’ she said. ‘The Excelsior star salesman speechless?’

‘What if, I said, ‘you found that I had only a year to live?’

She tilted her head a little to one side and looked at me narrowly. ‘Are you going to tell me you have got AIDS?’

‘No, Serafina, I haven’t got AIDS.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘Never mind. You’re busy now, I’ll go.’ I left the kitchen, went through the restaurant and out into the hall. The shop was at one end of it, the street at the other. I was halfway out into Earl’s Court Road when I had an impulse to buy some rose-hip tea. I spun around and was almost in the shop when I heard Mr Rinyo-Clacton talking to Ron, the owner.

‘Is it true,’ he was asking, ‘what they say about ginseng?’