‘Cool,’ said Darius coolly. ‘But now you need to memorise the Bertie Bean script.’
‘… the blacker they get. Sometimes …’
‘It’s very simple. You approach the punters with a smile.’
‘… I think I should change them, but …’
‘Well, you don’t need to smile, because it’s actually painted on the costume. But you’ll find …’
‘… something keeps telling me …’
‘… smiling actually makes your voice sound friendlier. So what you say is …’
‘… don’t wash them yet.’
Mother had taught me the song in the stuttering days. We sang it together as a round.
‘… Hi! I’m Bertie Bean, and I want to introduce you to a totally new coffee experience …’
‘Hi! I’m B-B-Bertie B-B-Bean.’ It was no good — my cortisol levels were all over the place. So I started to sing. The words didn’t fit the tune, but I got them out anyway. Darius looked impressed.
‘Cool! Awesome! You can sing it!’ He thrust a basket of samples into my hands, and pushed me towards the stairs. ‘Take care.’
The bottom of the costume was gathered tight at the hem, so getting down the stairs was tricky, and even on the pavement I could only walk in small mincing steps. I suppose women get used to walking like this, but for a bloke it’s disempowering. There was no mirror in the office, so it wasn’t until I saw my reflection in a plate-glass window that I realised how absurd I looked. I tried to distance myself, Berthold Sidebottom, the distinguished Shakespearean actor, from the weird figure scuttling like an upright cockroach among the busy commuters. It’s a tribute to the broad-mindedness of Londoners that no one gave me a second glance.
The morning was bright with a hint of warmth as I positioned myself on the wide, newly renovated forecourt of the station where people converged from all directions and I could eye up my quarry from a few feet away, estimate their trajectory, and intercept.
‘Hi! I’m Bertie Bean …!’
When I was a kid Mother had taken me out leafleting, so I was not surprised by the responses. What surprised me was how long it took to give away my basket of beans. You would have thought I was handing out narcotics. Most passers-by were in a hurry and dodged out of my way; some who couldn’t dodge grabbed the free samples and put them into the nearest bin or dropped them on the ground; a few listened to the whole script, then politely said, ‘No, thank you.’ Those were the nice ones, but they were few. After an hour of this, I was filled with loathing for my fellow humans. After two hours, I was filled with self-loathing, an outcast from humanity metamorphosed into a despised sub-species, an insect on legs — a bare, forked animal. After three hours, I was beyond thinking, sweating inside my costume and desperate for a drink.
At the other end of the precinct four young people wearing red T-shirts with the logo of an animal charity were trying to sign up punters to a direct debit. As the morning wore on, I saw their expressions and gestures gradually stiffen like puppets. At 10 a.m., the hour of my liberation, I went up and persuaded them to take the remaining eight bags of beans in my basket.
‘Yeah, mate, sure. Can we sign you up for a donation to save rhinos?’
‘I haven’t got any money,’ I said. ‘Else I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?’
Darius was on the phone when I got back to the Smøk & Miras office. Still talking, he watched me as I disengaged myself from my costume and put on my jacket, which I’d hung on the back of the door.
Just as I was about to leave, he put the phone down. ‘What took you so long?’
‘I thought you said ten o’clock.’
‘Yeah, but you should’ve been back for at least another basket in that time. How long can it take to give away a quality product like ours?’
‘Longer than you’d think.’
‘You must have got the wrong technique.’ He scratched the arse of a grinning demon tattooed on his scalp. ‘Let’s see how you get on this afternoon when they’re on the home straight. Call back here just before four o’clock.’
The six hours I had to kill in the middle of the day dwindled quickly. The journey itself took almost an hour.
Inna was out when I got back. I stuck my head around the door of her room but there was no sign of her. A haze of L’Heure Bleue greeted my nostrils, and the familiar thick brown envelope, now rather dog-eared, was propped up against the mirror of the dressing table. I felt an immense urge to open it, but held back out of decency.
Instead, I had a chat with Flossie, scoffed the kobsabki that Inna had prepared for me, checked my email, had a shower and changed my shirt, which was damp with sweat.
Then it was time to run for the bus again.
When I arrived at Smøk & Miras just before four o’clock, Darius was on the phone again.
‘… Cool. Cool. No worries. Leave it to me.’ He put the phone down as I was getting into my costume.
‘You forgot to change your socks.’
I glanced down at my feet, feigning surprise. ‘So I did.’
‘Have you any idea how ridiculous you look?’ There was a nasty edge to his voice.
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
The sun had gone behind the clouds, and a cool wind was blowing empty crisp packets and discarded copies of Metro across the dismal granite expanse of the precinct. The rhino chuggers had been replaced by four cancer chuggers; despite the gravity of their cause their expressions were still fresh and hopeful. They each took a little bag of my coffee beans with enthusiasm, and informed me how high my chances were of contracting cancer.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That’s the least of my worries.’
The travellers streaming across the forecourt now were fewer and less frenetic than in the morning rush hour. I went back to my previous spot in front of a granite bench, and started singing my introduction, not so much because of the stutter, more as a way of distancing the ridiculous Bertie Bean from me, the human hiding inside the bean. As I sang Bertie’s words, he became no longer me but a character in a pantomime. The churning sense of humiliation I had felt that morning had given way to a dull ache of acceptance; these were not people but punters crawling across the station forecourt, just a different species of insect. On the whole, the women were pleasanter than the men, but there was not much in it.
The young woman pulling an oversized suitcase in the direction of St Pancras Station didn’t at first glance look any different from the hundreds of other punters who had crossed my path that day. It was her way of walking that caught my attention, an extra bouncy lightness in her step despite the weight of her case, as though she was skipping from cloud to cloud, the way angels do. It wasn’t just an average case that you take for a weekend away; it was the sort of giant case in which you pack up your life before moving on.
‘Violet!’ I stepped out in front of her. ‘Where are you going with that enormous bag?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Her eyes flickered over me without recognition. I guessed she hadn’t heard me say her name. She glanced down at the samples in my hand and smiled briefly. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m in a rush!’ She dodged around me and hurried on.
I could have introduced myself, I could have offered to help with her bag, I could have persuaded her to stop for a coffee; but I didn’t do any of those things. I stepped aside and let her go on her angelic way, following her with my eyes as she crossed the road and headed towards St Pancras without pausing at the traffic lights, without looking left and right. It was the spring in her step that bewitched me, releasing a memory that came crashing in on me without warning; it was the same carefree step with which Meredith had skipped out across the road that day, not waiting for the green man, not seeing the white van speeding up out of nowhere.