They walked into the café together, but not in the right
way. As the mother took the step and
crossed the room, selected a chair and sat heavily upon it, she had all the
airs of a woman alone, looking forward, hands by her sides. When she sat she did not touch the chair with
any but the requisite body part, as if too proud, too afraid that even
self-assisted sitting might show her age.
This indignant relationship with the furniture in fact derailed her
otherwise perfect line of presentation; she must have been at least forty,
though in a snapshot she was a woman of no more than thirty.
But once she’d placed herself down, there appeared her
entourage, a son – a darling of nine or ten in a navy blazer and shorts, a
flat-topped straw hat hanging from a pudgy index finger – was pulled to her
table despite all lack of encouragement, by an invisible umbilical attaching
him to the reluctant party in the low brown leather armchair, the copy of which
he pulled himself up and onto, opposite her.
His exposed legs dangled, though he sat the very edge, trying to deny
his diminutive body.
But despite all his smallness it was soon clear to all neighbours
who cared to listen that he was possessed of a large wit, more than most men
carry into their wisdomless elderly years.
That strange kind of wit that some children take on so easily from the chronic
satire of the upper-middle-class, a soft skull in a private-eye household, the
brain impressed with the dialect of the panel game-show and the background
noise of Radio 4.
The mother sat back into the depths of the armchair, legs
neatly crossed in slim suit trousers, her head resting on three fingers of her
right hand. The boy leaned forward and
picked up a cardboard menu from the table.
“Do you want a latte?
Or a cappuccino – you can have a decaf, I don’t know how that is
supposed to work, coffee with no coffee in it, but oh well.” Not a nod or smile from his counterpart, his
challenge seems to be to excite her, to please her. He continued, sceptical adult words spoken
though a fresh young throat, he scoffed at the childish hot chocolate until the
waitress appeared. Rooting in her shirt
pocket for a pad and pencil, she spoke sweetly.
“Hello what can I get you?”
“An Americano hot milk no sugar,“ the mother said in one
word “and…” she pointed her eyes at the boy, the waitress scribbled and turned with
a bright smile reserved for the smaller customers.
“I will have a small, no, a medium cappuccino please.”
The waitress faltered, curled a furl of hair behind an ear
and suggested “Is that a decaf cappuccino?”
“No I don’t think so, just a regular thank-you.”
The waitress looked for an objection from the mother but she
had bowed her head behind her hand, as if hiding from a vicious sun beam, the
girl giggled and trotted off.
“You know mum” started the boy, “today Charlie said he was
going to drop maths and I told him it was insane but he said he was going to
and that-”
The boy spoke at with a quiet voice suggestive of an
intimate, mature tête-à-tête, but with an excited pace that he could not
suppress, as if sure that each following sentence would be the one to please
his company. The mother leant back
further into the hollow of the chair, listening to her son as she would a
husband she had long ago decided to loath.
“- and he said was getting his father – they all say father,
mum, it’s so posh, dad would hate that wouldn’t he mum – he’s getting his
father to get him out of maths because the economoney doesn’t need more maths
people, and I told him it was insane, mum, he wants to take up French instead
but I told him, mum, I said to him ‘as if this economoney needs more French
people’, I said that to him mum!”
The drinks appeared, the mother poured the steaming milk
into the dark liquid, while the boy eyed his cappuccino and sighed loudly.
“Can’t they not put chocolate in anything? I bet it was that girl, mum, that girl you
know?” The boy he lifted the mug to his
mouth and then placed it on the table, the chocolate-dusted foam lid clearly
untouched, the mother glanced at the boy, he made an emphatic swallowing noise
but she was clearly unconvinced and looked back to the ceiling.
“Let’s play a game,” the boy says suddenly, “do you want to
play a game? We could play that one with
the letters!”
The boy’s mother looks at something just behind her son’s
head, she sips from her coffee and hardly moves her lips as she speaks.
“No, no let’s not.”