Vinegar Soup Read online

  A few days later he had replaced the wood and metal counter with a second-hand display cabinet, bright, shining and chilled to a frost. Behind its heavy, sliding doors food sat and shimmered in trays.

  There were trays of cheese and hard-boiled eggs, tinned salmon, corned beef slices, chicken pies, steak pies, beans and porkies. Olive spent hours patiently arranging the food according to its shape and colour. She guarded the cabinet with a jealous pride, wearing the key on her apron string, as if she were curator of a strange museum. And, as Veronica had predicted, reluctant customers quickly recovered their appetites and exercised them on Gilbert’s cooking. Gilbert, excited, laughing, belly big as Buddha, put away his hammer and chisel and returned to the kitchen. The oven roared and the windows steamed. They were back in business.

  To celebrate the renovations Gilbert created a hamburger special he called Enola Gay: a glistening tower of hamburger, oozing relish, that concealed a bomb of mustard pickle and red pepper sauce so powerful it made strong men blister and glow in the dark.

  As the cafe prospered so Frank began to grow again. He was now as tall as Gilbert. His shoes were splitting like chestnuts. His voice began to crack.

  ‘You’re sprouting whiskers,’ whispered Veronica, standing close enough to make him blush and trying to tickle his chin.

  ‘It’s my age,’ squeaked Frank and a button burst on his shirt. Veronica smiled. ‘You’ll soon be getting notions,’ she crooned.

  ‘What sort of notions?’ frowned Frank.

  ‘Mind your own business.’ She grinned and turned away in a flutter of skirts.

  The next morning Frank borrowed Gilbert’s razor and made a bloody attempt to shave. He spent the rest of the day with a plaster under his chin and his shirt drenched in Bay Rum cologne. Veronica gave him a wicked smile whenever she passed the kitchen.

  Olive, who had now cautiously accepted Gilbert’s return to the bedroom on the understanding he sleep in a separate bed, was disturbed by Frank’s development. She lay awake at night and brooded. ‘He’s growing too fast,’ she complained in the dark. ‘It’s not natural. You ought to have a word with him.’

  ‘I can’t stop the boy growing,’ growled Gilbert from the far corner of the room. They don’t stay puppies for ever. What did she want him to do about it? Cut him down with a pruning knife?

  ‘You’ll have to say something,’ insisted Olive gloomily.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ yawned Gilbert. He heard the mattress wheeze as Olive sat up and slapped her pillows.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about,’ she hissed across the room. ‘You ought to tell him the facts of life.’

  ‘Which facts?’

  ‘All the nasty ones,’ shuddered Olive. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.

  Gilbert grinned and continued to stare at the darkness. Carnal knowledge. That’s what she’s talking about. The pleasures of the flesh. The thumping, bumping, belching, squelching, knee bending, teeth-grinding, belly bouncing, pleasures of the flesh. How to explain? Send him to the brothels of North Africa. That’s what they did in the old days. Finished off their education. Leave him alone and he’ll find out. Ignorance is bliss. Nobody gets away with it. Veronica will wet his whistle.

  The months slipped away and Frank continued to grow. Gilbert kept watch and found nothing wrong. He was strong and healthy. He washed every day and shaved once a week. He certainly knew he was now a man: he blushed at the flirtatious laughter of the women customers, stammered when he spoke to them, avoided their eyes and hurried away at the least excuse; yet when Gilbert searched his face he saw nothing there but innocence.

  And then, one night, Frank woke up in the dark. It was two o’clock in the morning. He slipped from the sheets, startled, holding his breath, staring wildly around the room. Something was scuttling under his bed. He knelt down and pressed his ear against the floor. The noises came from the kitchen. He knew Gilbert was asleep. He could hear him snoring. He knew the doors to the street were tight. He’d made it his business to lock them. Were the windows closed? He couldn’t remember.

  He felt defenceless in his pyjamas. He crawled across the floor, groped for his shoes and fumbled to knot the laces. There was a muffled crash of glass from the kitchen. He shivered and searched for the stairs.

  The cafe was in darkness. Frank reached the dining room and crept slowly along the wall. There was someone prowling in the kitchen. He could hear them breathing. He tiptoed forward, following the edge of the wall until he had reached the open door. And then he paused. Had they heard him? Were they waiting? Knives. Axes. Broken bottles. Too late. Don’t stop. He stretched out an arm and snapped on the light.

  Veronica was squatting in the middle of the kitchen floor. She was using her fingers to sweep glass into a dustpan. She scowled impatiently at the glare from the lights but she didn’t look surprised.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, glancing at him as she picked at the glass. ‘Help me clear up this mess or Gilbert will throttle me in the morning.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ demanded Frank. ‘I thought someone had broken into the place.’

  ‘The great sandwich robbery,’ smirked Veronica.

  ‘They’ll steal anything. I thought they were taking the place apart.’

  Veronica narrowed her curved, grey eyes and studied him for a moment.

  ‘Is that why you’re wearing your shoes?’ she inquired.

  Frank couldn’t think of a sensible answer. He looked around the kitchen at the open cupboards, the torn carton of milk, the scattered biscuits and half-eaten sandwich. The waitress was raiding the larder.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, Frank. Come and help me,’ said Veronica. She shook the dustpan to make it rattle, stood up and walked away to empty it. She was wearing an old shirt. Frank stared at the long, pale stalks of her legs. The shirt barely covered her buttocks.

  ‘What are you doing in the kitchen? Do you know what time it is? It’s two o’clock in the morning,’ he complained.

  ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘It’s nearly time for breakfast. Why didn’t you eat before you went to bed?’

  ‘I wasn’t hungry when I went to bed and stop trying to look through my shirt.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Frank, staring at the shirt. His ears were hot. His face stung with embarrassment.

  ‘You’re doing it again.’

  ‘It’s my age,’ said Frank. ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘I suppose little boys are born with turds for brains,’ said Veronica sardonically.

  ‘You should have put on your dressing gown!’ retorted Frank.

  ‘I didn’t know I was going to be spied on by a nasty little boy. Jesus! I’m old enough to be your mother,’ hooted Veronica. She found the half-eaten sandwich and pushed it greedily into her mouth.

  Frank, who could name all the spiders to be found in wild pineapples, tried to check Veronica’s claim of maternity with some rapid mental arithmetic and failed. ‘I’m nearly fifteen,’ he said at last.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning, Veronica. I was going to call the police.’

  ‘I’ll call ’em if you don’t stop staring at me,’ she said, spitting crumbs.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ said Frank.

  ‘I’ve caught you watching me, trying to look up my skirt,’ she said, waving a piece of crust at him.

  ‘When?’ said Frank. He blushed and scowled and turned away. Everyone tried to look up her skirt. Men threw their spoons on the ground when she passed near their tables. Gilbert polished floors until they shone like mirrors. Dogs howled and pushed their snouts between her knees. He wasn’t going to be blamed for it.

  ‘You watch me when I’m working. You think I haven’t noticed?’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘I can feel you trying to undress me with those big, brown eyes. And they think you’re so innocent! They should keep you on a chain. You’re dangerous.’

  ‘Are you coming to bed?’ demanded Frank
impatiently.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she snapped. Frank shrugged. As he walked to the door she grabbed him by his pyjama jacket, spun him around and watched him jump from his shoes. He lay, stunned, on the floor and let Veronica tread on him.

  ‘I mean why don’t we go back to bed?’ wheezed Frank. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me,’ said Veronica, as she kicked him. ‘I’ll scream. I’m not afraid of you.’

  He wriggled and caught her foot in his hands. It was soft and surprisingly warm. He cradled it gently with his fingers, staring along the length of her leg towards the swell of her shirt tails. ‘Calm down,’ he panted. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she hissed. ‘Look at the size of your hands. It’s frightening.’ She managed to twist herself free of his grasp and fell against the wall. ‘You’ll grow into a strangler,’ she gasped. ‘Those hands aren’t natural. You’ve been cursed with stranglers’ hands!’

  Frank whimpered and tried to hide his hands inside his pyjamas. Olive said he grew in his sleep. Some mornings he hardly recognised himself. He would go to bed in full working order and wake up with ears that had unfurled like wings or hands the size of paddles dangling from strings he had once thought were arms. His body had become a monstrous burden of crawling skin that changed its size and shape around him.

  ‘I don’t want to fight,’ said Frank. ‘I just want to go to bed.’ He glanced towards the safety of the door but Veronica leapt on him. She sat astride him, her knees cracking his bones, her ankles sharp as spurs.

  ‘Listen – if you tell Gilbert I was stealing food I’ll kill you. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ croaked Frank.

  She caught his wrists and held them above his head. Her breasts shivered under her shirt. Frank squirmed. He felt suffocated. His head was ringing. Trapped painfully in his pyjamas his penis felt as hard as a carrot.

  ‘I’ll tell him you tried to interfere with me.’

  ‘Interfere?’

  ‘Don’t you know what it means?’ whispered Veronica gleefully. Her eyes blazed. Her hair, cut with bacon scissors, stood out from her skull in ghostly spikes. ‘I’ll tell him you pushed me down on the kitchen floor. I’ll tell him you pulled up my skirt and exposed yourself!’ She grinned. Her tongue poked between her teeth.

  ‘But it’s not true!’ wailed Frank.

  ‘So what?’ said Veronica. ‘He’ll believe whatever I want to tell him. No one would trust a nasty lecherous little boy who creeps around in the dark like a strangler.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Veronica. The shirt fell open at the neck. He followed the long cords of her throat to the shadows in her clavicles and then swept down, staring into darkness in search of her breasts. He could see nothing. He was blind. He rolled his head in despair.

  ‘Where do you get such terrible ideas?’

  ‘Oh, I get all my best ideas from the magazines in your room,’ she said, lifting herself slightly from his body and bouncing down again with a cruel slap of her knees.

  ‘What magazines?’ bleated Frank. His face was scarlet with excitement and fright.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. You didn’t get those from the library!’ she said, struggling to hold his hands as he made a last desperate effort to escape.

  Frank surrendered. He lay helpless beneath Veronica and closed his eyes. He had found the magazines on a chair in the dining room. Three thumbed copies of Wobble. When he thought no one was watching, he had pushed them under his shirt and smuggled them into his bedroom. There, under the bedclothes with his Mickey Mouse torch, Frank had seen his first naked women. It was a shock. They were quite unlike anything he had managed to conjure up in his imagination. His own fantasy women were small, white and smooth as statues. The women from Wobble were pink and swollen and hairy. They wore masks and high rubber boots and rolled around the dog-eared pages like a troupe of demon acrobats, legs over arms, hands clutching feet, breasts hanging loose as pastry. They were so different from the women he saw every day in the street that Frank suspected they might be a special race of women, held captive by the magazine. He liked to dream that one of them would escape and seek safety at the Hercules Cafe. Frank kept her in the wardrobe where she slept by day and ventured to his bed at night dressed in her mask and rubber boots. He fed her seed cake and flasks of coffee.

  ‘What were you doing in my room?’ he demanded.

  ‘Looking for magazines, stupid,’ said Veronica. She stood up suddenly and pulled down her shirt. Her face was flushed. Her knees looked bruised. While Frank continued to sprawl on the floor Veronica began to bustle about the kitchen sweeping up crumbs and locking cupboards as if nothing had happened. Frank remained where he had fallen for several minutes but, it was no good, Veronica had finished with him.

  After that first encounter she kept Frank simmering on a low heat. She contrived to leave the door unlocked when she took a bath so that Frank came blundering into the room in search of a toothbrush or razor, caught a glimpse of her soapy breasts before she blinded him with the sponge. She brushed against him while he worked in the kitchen until he blushed or scalded his hands.

  The succuba he invited to his room at night no longer looked like the women from Wobble. The creature he conjured from bed sheets and shadow was a small-breasted sprite with curved grey eyes and badly cropped hair. Somewhere on the outskirts of sleep she would visit him, whispering, laughing, mocking him through the darkness. He prowled his nocturnal underworld with the lust of a panther. When she grew too bold and stepped within reach he would tear her clothes apart with his hands, smother her screams and feast on the luminous flesh. During the day she might feel secure and shrug off his love-sick glances. But at night, when she locked herself in her room to sleep, Frank was a few short yards away, mad-eyed, growling, savagely rutting with her kidnapped ghost. No cruelty was beyond him. No form of assault left unexplored. He tortured her until she surrendered and eventually, since this was the only conclusion that pleased him, no matter what outrage he cared to inflict, she would cry out with pleasure and confess her love for him.

  Each morning he searched her face for some echo of the violation she had been made to endure in his sleep. But he was always disappointed. She remained untouched by his dreams. The more he yearned for a word or a smile the less she seemed to notice him. She might ignore him for days at a time. And then, when he felt so rejected he no longer cared to pay her attention, something would happen to rekindle his desire.

  Once, passing her room at night, the door flew open and she pulled him roughly into her arms. She was stripped to her shoes and underwear. Before he knew what was happening she had squeezed him, kissed him, spun him around and leapt to safety on the bed.

  He stood on the carpet and stared nervously around him. The room was warm and smelt of cloves. A thin piece of curtain had been drawn across the window. Beside the window stood a plywood wardrobe painted white, the doors embellished with magazine pictures of dogs, cats and mountain ponies. Against one wall stood the desk she used as a dressing table. The desk top was covered in rubbish. While he waited for something to happen and to keep his eyes away from a pair of gleaming stocking tops which, since Veronica was standing on the bed, were now at a level with his face, Frank stared at the rubbish. He counted a box of cotton-wool, a strip of codeine, crumpled Kleenex, a few sticks of cheap lipstick, an empty perfume bottle, a shaving mirror, hairbrush, comb, a piece of novelty soap in the shape of a rabbit, a wristwatch, Elastoplast, small cotton brassiere, gold bracelet and half a biscuit. The brassiere made him blush. He stared at the ceiling.

  ‘There!’ she called suddenly, pointing at something beneath his feet.

  ‘What?’ said Frank, peering at his slippers.

  ‘A spider!’ yelled Veronica. She trampolined across the bed with excitement.

  Frank jumped. ‘It won’t hurt you,’ he said. A tangle of long black legs scuttled for cover under a chair.
Frank stepped on it.

  ‘I didn’t tell you to squash it,’ said Veronica in dismay. She stopped bouncing and fell down among the pillows.

  ‘I wasn’t going to eat it,’ said Frank cheerfully, examining the stain on the carpet.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ pouted Veronica.

  ‘You hate them,’ said Frank.

  ‘Oh, get out!’ she shouted, pulling off a shoe and throwing it at him.

  Another time, when he had smacked his hand with a hammer, Veronica came running to nurse him with unexpected tenderness.

  ‘Come here,’ she said as he staggered about the room, swearing and clutching his wrist. ‘You might have broken something.’

  He sat down and gave her the damaged hand. She spread his fingers into a fan, as if to count them, frowned, selected the index and slipped it slowly into her mouth to draw the bruise.

  The clasp of her lips and the hot suction of her tongue was enough to send Frank fainting. He closed his eyes and groaned. The world rocked dangerously.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she said, pulling the finger from her mouth.

  Frank shook his head. His ears burst into flames. His face shone with sweat. Veronica grinned and returned his hand. When she had gone he stood up and looked for himself in the mirror. His teeth were bared. His eyes were wild. The Devil’s own finger stuck like a spear through his apron.

  The Devil gave him courage. The following day he confronted Veronica, declared his love and threw himself on her mercy. She smiled mysteriously and said nothing. Frank felt encouraged. Sometimes, when they were alone, he would pull her into a hurried embrace. She did not resist but when he tried to kiss her she would only laugh and push him away. Baffled and humiliated, fighting back tears, he would sit alone and sulk. Then Veronica would creep behind him, cover his eyes and plant a kiss behind his ear. As Gilbert suspected, she was helping to give Frank an education.