*
Chairs had been dragged to tables and a few ragged circles constituted. The old faces and old bodies jumbled up with Errol and Co, higgledy-piggledy. ‘In utter confusion.’ Probably with reference to the irregular herding together of pigs, from the Latin porcus. With their snouts in their paper plates. I’d expected someone to turn on the telly, so that the silence might be filled up with chatter, but they were all too busy stuffing themselves. For a while you could hear nothing in the Café but an oceanic murmur of snorting and snuffling, in which the sounds from the street — hooters, curses, catcalls, explosions, drunken choruses — were presently submerged.
I looked in on Alibia, where it was still broad daylight, where this evening had not yet begun, and made straight for St Cloud’s Square to buy a buttonhole for the long-awaited dinner. Perhaps I should splash out on a bottle of champagne, I was thinking, and pop the question along with the cork? My old friend Munnery hailed me from the other side of the canaclass="underline" ‘Big night tonight, Tearle. Don’t forget the chestnuts.’
Should I present ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ now? As a prelude to my announcement, I cleaned my spectacles. When I put them back on again, I noticed the plastic No. 2 still standing to attention beside the sugar pot, and it brought a lump to my throat. I am generally a tough customer. As if to remind me of this fact, a girl with a silver boater on the back of her head took one of the sugar sachets from the pot, opened it with her teeth, and poured the contents into the pocket of Patronymić’s jacket.
The gobbling rose, and fell, and ebbed away. As the plates emptied, and the realization that they were still hungry began to creep up on the grazers, the mood of disappointment grew. They were still hungry. It made them bloody-minded.
‘Just like old times, hey?’ Wessels smirked.
‘Not exactly. We were a quieter lot.’
‘You wouldn’t shut up for a minute,’ Darlene said.
I addressed Spilkin over her head. ‘We got on splendidly in the beginning, before all this other nonsense started.’
‘What nonsense would that be, Aubrey? Bad table manners? Talking with your mouth full?’
‘This perpetual discord.’
‘I think it’s quite peaceful around here, all things considered.’
‘Even you and I had our differences. But we always patched them up, because we had so much in common to start with.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. We shared a couple of interests, but we were worlds apart as people.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘You’re totally verkramp, for one thing,’ Darlene put in her five cents’ worth.
I’d heard the Afrikanerism before. There was silence for a moment, a true silence, round and hollow, as her words sank in, and then the grunting and grinding rose up in it like backwash in a blowhole. Greasy lips, crumbs of food in the corners of mouths, flies and fever blisters, morsels spilled on the tables, gristle, grubs.
‘Some misguided people find me unbending, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It serves my purposes. My one aim has been to raise standards of conduct and thought, not just between these four walls, but in the world beyond. I’ve always tried to set an example.’
‘That’s the bloody problem,’ said Spilkin. ‘You think people need correcting. Your obsession with raising us up to your level shows exactly how little you think of us. It’s the measure of your disdain.’
Then an ’Enry said I was a misanthrope, and Wessels said I hated him, and Darlene said I hated her even more. No matter what I said in reply, they just shouted me down with mock arguments about which of them I disliked the most. They were ganging up on me. I saw it now. At the eleventh hour, they had resolved to drive me out. The drumsticks rose and fell, beating a tattoo on the paper plates, the jaws went on grinding. Darlene drew a wishbone through the gaps in her teeth, first one branch and then the other. ‘Make a wish, Tearle.’ She held the bone out to me.
My little finger twinged, but refused to pronate.
‘You see. He won’t even pull with me.’
‘He might get a bit of your gob on his precious pinkie.’
‘He thinks his arse is parsley.’
Another round of gibing about my hypocrisy, my stand-offishness, I was high and mighty, that was the word, I did not want to mix. Someone claimed that I used to lie about my address so that no one would visit me. I made a spirited defence of the virtue of keeping one’s private life private, of maintaining the proper balance between the private and the public — it was a European art, I said, by way of explanation. That caused an outcry.
‘Your European affectations were always nauseating,’ Spilkin said in a threatening tone, ‘going on about the difference between “ambience” and “atmosphere”, as if every pretentious little “bistro” didn’t lay claim to “ambience”. The estate agents cottoned on to it years ago. And picking on the Americans, as if it’s their fault there’s a Hamburger Hut on Piccadilly Circus.’
‘I just happen to prefer the European way of life. I find it civilized.’
‘They hell of a civilized … when they not killing each other.’
‘Ah yes, the Europeans, you’re very big on them. But when you meet one in the flesh, like Bogey, you can’t stand him.’
‘Bogey is a poor example. The man’s a drunkard.’
‘Hey, Bogue, did you hear this?’
Bogue?
‘You’re so churlish.’ I supposed Spilkin was referring to the way Wessels mangled my name, but he went on, ‘You never have a good word to say about anyone or anything. A real Jeremiah, that’s what you are.’
‘No, no, I might own up to being a Jonah, but never a Jeremiah.’
‘Do you remember when Darlene first came to the Café? You said she was a whore.’
‘Well, you did find her in a bordello.’
‘Your bum in a drum!’
‘How dare you! I met her at the Perm. She was a cashier.’
‘I’m telling you, she used to come in here with her clients. As bold a bit of brass as you’d find in a Szechuan kitchen. I saw her with a man once, sticking her tongue in his ear.’
‘She never set foot in this place until I brought her here myself!’
‘Impossible.’
‘You have a memory like a sieve. You shake out the bits that don’t suit you.’
‘There’s nothing cribriform about my memory.’
‘If you’d stop trying to be clever and listen to what we’re saying, you might learn something for once. We should have spoken up when you started with Evaristus. It shames me that we didn’t.’
‘When I started what?’
‘Calling him Eveready.’
‘That’s his name.’
‘Nonsense. You came up with it. You said he was a bright spark. It’s a nasty streak in you. Who else would have called Mevrouw Bonsma “Crêpe Suzanna” behind her back?’
‘Spilkijn!’ The word stuck out from between her lips like a toothpick.
‘Remember when he said the blacks should have their own crockery.’
‘He said it was unhealthy.’
‘That was the dog!’
‘You’ve got a short memory.’
‘I’ve got a memory like an elephant.’ Dumbo rose involuntarily to mind. ‘You’re all putting words in my mouth, inventing things I couldn’t possibly have said.’
‘You and your insinuendoes.’
‘He never learns neither. Even tonight he called Eugene a rat.’
In the middle of this farce, who should come into focus but Quim, from the Jumbo Liquor Market, smiling at me superciliously, despite my glaring back. Could he have put them up to this? Has he acquired what they call ‘clout’ in what they call ‘the new dispensation’?