Raindrops on Roses

This short story was prompted by a rainy night in a less than pretty part of town..

Rain can be bone numbingly cold. Standing in the rain, for hours on end, might seem like something that only a fool would do, and it probably is. On the other hand, rain can be your friend when you are alone in the dark of the evening. The sound of rain on the pavement has a distinctive tune that most people never hear - because they never stop to listen. The rush of water in a gutter carries the melody and the raindrops on flagstones pick out the tune. Close your eyes and open your ears and you will hear it.

Close your eyes and you can be somewhere else; somewhere other than the street. No one walks along a street in the rain. Before it rained, they were content to walk along the street, some smiled some did not, but when it rains, no one smiles. People hunch their shoulders as if to hide their head, to shelter it in some tiny way, from the water that is descending on them. Hands thrust into pockets and faces bent towards the ground. No one looks up into the falling rain, no one looks left or right, no one looks at me as they pass. They rush on by, not because their journey is suddenly more important than it was before, but because their transit has suddenly become unbearable.

I stand in the rain. I could stand under the cover of a doorway, or go inside, somewhere dry and warm, but not tonight, not on Monday night.

Across the road is a café with streaks of pale yellow light shining from its windows, dancing like wanton pixies on the wet pavement in time with the rain’s watery tune. Perhaps I should go into the café and sit huddled around a hot mug of tea or coffee? But not on Monday night.

The glass is misted, but I can read the signs that hang on chains from hooks stuck to the glass with faded rubber suction pads. None of the signs hangs straight; each one is slightly askew. I long to cross the road and correct the offending signs. It teases my mind to imagine why each one is at an angle, and I make up stories in my head about each sign.

One sign tells me when the café opens and when it closes. Two crazed plastic clock faces show the same time. Perhaps the café never closes.

I imagine boys on bicycles stopping for tea and toast after delivering the morning papers. I see women, laden with shopping bags, chatting animatedly over their mid-morning coffee. Lunch always smells of fried food; eggs, sausages and the limp greasy chips served with everything. Afternoon tea is served with strawberry jam and scones that still carry the all-pervading perfume of the lunchtime chips. In the evening, the café rests. A television, hangs precariously on a loose wall-bracket; it is always tuned to the sports channel, but there is no sound and no one watches. A sad, lonely individual, sits at a table for one, and orders an ‘all-day-breakfast’ which is the same composition as the lunch menu, and may well have been kept under the kitchen lights since then. The egg is solid but the lone diner does not care. He sits there reading a discarded newspaper, avidly absorbing its day-old news.

I know this man; he comes here every Monday evening, at the same hour. He always wears the same suit, with creaseless trousers that bag at the knees. The jacket that once fitted him is now two sizes too large, yet it manages to hide the frayed collar of his shirt. His hair is grey and thinning. Sometimes I can see his grey scalp through grey strands of lank hair. Tonight, he wears a grey felt hat to keep the rain off his aging head. I know this hat; it was once a jaunty trilby with a bright silk band, now it is wet, sodden with the rain and limp where it was once proud.

I watched him arrive, bathed briefly in the sudden flood of warm amber light as the café door opened and closed around him. His silhouette passed behind the greasy, misted window and I watched him circle the small shabby room until he found a newspaper to read. He sat at his usual table facing the window. He always sits there pretending to read the financial pages but I know that he is looking over the top of the crumpled page. He is looking over the page, through the window and across the street. He is looking at me.

He orders tea and pretends to scan the menu. I watch the round white-apron shape of the cook pass to and fro, taking the order, delivering the tea, taking the order for his meal and then delivering it to the table. It is a charade that happens every Monday evening. Both players know their parts and play them in the manner of repertory actors, at a matinee performance, in a provincial theatre; playing the same show for the umpteenth time. The repertory actor goes through the motions on his stage, in front of an audience of seven elderly ladies who have come into town by bus, especially for the play. The grey man plays his part for an audience of one.

I know the play so well. I know his role and I know exactly how he will deliver it. He is the consummate artiste. He will drink his tea and pretend not to notice me, but I know that he has seen me, and he knows that I am watching him. This opening scene always takes seven minutes. The lumbering cook will bring a plate to the table and the grey man will ask for bread and butter. The cook will lumber away into the depths of the café and the grey man will shuffle the cutlery on either side of his plate, while he waits for the bread to arrive. He will polish an invisible stain from his knife with a folded paper napkin, and he will not look up again until the side plate arrives.

He will thank the cook for the bread, lift his knife and fork and pause, as if he is about to say grace, and then he will see me, across the road, in the pale light of a street lamp. He will look directly at me. His eyes will bore into me, in search of my soul, and then he will start to eat.

I stay near the street lamp, not directly under the light but nearby; close enough for him to know that I am still there. I will pretend not to notice him and he will return to his laborious task of cutting the cold, leathery egg into digestible slices. This scene will take seventeen minutes. It does not take that long to eat the egg, but it serves for him to pretend to read the news paper and to make sure that I am still there.

The scene is always the same. After two minutes, he looks up and peers into the darkness as though he has just spotted a passing stranger. After five minutes, he looks up again and stares at me. I ignore him and he returns to his paper. After ten minutes he looks directly at me over the top of his paper and I look directly back at him. He will lay his paper on the table, finish his meal and ask for the bill.

The bill is always the same. He could leave the money on the table, but he waits for the cook to bring the hand scribbled note on a cracked saucer that doubles as an ashtray. The man will look at the total and bury his hand in his pocket in search of some coins. He always has the exact amount which he arranges in descending order of denomination on the saucer. The largest coins are furthest away from him and the smallest are nearest. The line is always as straight as a row of soldiers.

He will fold the newspaper and leave it neatly beside the cracked saucer before standing up and placing his chair neatly in line with the table.

Tonight, the play is performed to perfection. Each move executed, like the precisely choreographed routine that it is. The door opens and the grey man stands, a shadow in the light, staring at the sky as if he might will the rain to stop.

The rain has not changed its tune all evening. The gutter, washed clean by the flood, sparkles with each gush of water and burbles its perpetual, melodic air. My sodden clothes cling to my body and I shiver with the cold as the play enters its last act.

The grey man turns up the collar of his jacket and pulls the wet grey felt, firmly onto his head. He brushes a stray lock of hair under his hat and looks both left and right. There is no traffic, there never is, this is a very quiet road. He crosses the road and pauses as though he is seeing me for the first time. He almost passes, and then - he hesitates;

‘Are you waiting for someone?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Perhaps we could go somewhere - drier?’

‘That would be nice.’

The rain runs off his felt hat in rivulets that splash onto his shoulders. He looks left and right again. The street is still empty, save for two lone and lonely figures, half lit by the grimy waxen lamp.

‘Do you charge for your company?’

‘Of course; but nothing too excessive.’

‘Oh dear, I’m afraid that I could not possibly . . . . . Please accept this, as a small recompense for wasting your time.’

He presses a £20 note into my hand and kisses me gently on my wet, rain-streaked cheek, and then, as every Monday evening, he just disappears into the shadows.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 21.03.2010

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