by Robert Stone
I had been to this restaurant once before on a previous date that hadn’t really worked out, but I had enjoyed the food and it was affordable. Also, the place was large, the lighting was sombre and the tables were well spaced out which meant that we could be private without having an unearned intimacy forced on us. You can be pressed together on these occasions as if you were the only two people left on Earth, then you find you have nothing to say to one another. I didn’t want that.
There were no cut flowers on the table but there were large living plants, palms perhaps, growing in ceramic tubs that had a Mediterranean look about them and that made you feel as if you were eating outside. From our table I could see the aquarium, the fish so still as though moored by silk threads but then subject to sudden panic, becoming instantly invisible, as a waiter hurried past. This was the sort of thing we could talk about, if the need arose.
You could hear piano music, a recording, if you listened for it, like a hidden stream singing with an unpredictable vigour, and I don’t want to say the room was gloomy, rather it was full of marvellous shadows.
I would have preferred that we arrived together, but this proved to be impossible. I hadn’t known that she would be late, although I thought it likely. She was the kind of woman who would compress fifteen minutes of life into five minutes of time. She would turn up, there was no question of that. I was early, as always. I asked for a bottle of water and there was bread and olives and that sort of thing.
When she arrived, she brought a little of the wintry evening in with her, in a cheerful way. She also carried, and I have to admit that I was surprised by this, a number of shopping bags. Not food shopping, that would have been absurd, but those paper carriers that you are given at the airport if you buy luxury goods from duty-free. Christmas shopping, maybe. I was pleased to see her arranging with the head-waiter to stow these bags behind the scenes. I didn’t want to have them clustered around our table as though we had been thrown into the street by a melodramatic landlord, sitting forlorn on the pavement, surrounded by all that we owned.
My relief was premature, however, because as soon as she had unloaded this cargo she went outside again and returned with more bags. The waiter seemed unperturbed, one of those types who prides himself on his unflappability. I should have gone over to her at this point and found out just what was going on and what could be done. I was already beginning to worry about what leaving the restaurant would be like. I ate a fat olive and a cube of white cheese. Two of the bags she was now hauling in looked a lot like suitcases. One was on wheels. She may really, that very evening, have returned from abroad and so all of this paraphernalia was justified.
She looked around for me. The waiter pointed. I raised half a breadstick a little faint-heartedly. She waved happily and left again.
The next thing was the standard lamp, somewhat in imitation of a Victorian street-light. The waiter stood it in a corner and plugged it in. It even gave out a dim glow redolent of foggy thoroughfares. The staff were taken with the effect and two or three stood around in admiration. A man in a chef’s hat had been called out to see the lamp. The clientèle was remarkably relaxed under the circumstances, not at all irritated by this one woman monopolising the attention of all of the waiters. None of them was simply spectating at this extraordinary performance but they were being discreet in that self-conscious way which demonstrated that they were well aware. They were an unlikely crew for this venue; a tall slim man with glasses attending to his wife, who was holding a baby wearing a striped jumper, whose halo of short red hair made him look like a huge bee, an elderly woman in a wheel-chair, very dignified, pushed by a grinning stocky man with a farmer’s massive hands. And a bald boy with the beard of a woodcutter or a harpooneer. I had a conviction that she knew all of these people though they gave no indication that this was so.
In the meantime, she had deposited several items of furniture around the reception area without me noticing; a small dressing-table with mirror, two upright wooden chairs and what surely could not have been a piano stool. There were now two or three paintings on the wall, rather neat English landscapes, that I had not noticed before and which might well have always been there. One was a brilliant white sky full of jackdaws that flickered and cackled with life. I hoped that she was not responsible for the spotted mongrel lying on a blanket by the kitchen door. It was only when the music was quieter that I heard the contented sucking of a row of puppies. Unhygienic, certainly, but they were no trouble.
The most inexplicable thing, I suppose, was the pillar box standing with immoveable density and the confidence of its authoritarian redness only two tables away. The mother of the baby strolled over to it and popped a postcard into its obliging mouth. After that the telephone box, also bright red, and equipped with an actual black Bakelite phone I remembered from childhood, was inevitable. Both telephone and pillar box were topped with snow.
I should say that my friend appeared flustered as she dealt with this succession of surprises, but neither embarrassed nor apologetic. She was now a great favourite with the waiters and waitresses. One of these scuttled by, doubled over, in pursuit of an errant ball of wool like a gigantic kitten, accidentally kicking it, to his own amusement, each time that he was about to pick it up. These people must be so bored most of the time.
There was an unseasonal grasshopper on our table, but they do appear on sunny days even in the winter. I brushed it away carefully with the back of my hand as though shepherding crumbs onto the floor. From the corner of my eye I thought I saw a dragonfly zigzag behind the aquarium, but in truth it could have been anything.
At this point I really was going to go over and ask what I could do but my fingers were very greasy from the olives and while wiping them I dropped my napkin and as I retrieved it, or tried to, I sensed, as much as saw, something under the table, something which I cannot describe and I didn’t feel I could leave this thing either unprotected or unsupervised.
Now she had produced a white sheet folded into a square, the size of a head scarf, and as she began to unfold it, everyone in the restaurant stopped what they were doing to watch. Even the dog raised its head.
Each unfolding of course doubled the area occupied by this white square. The staff moved tables and chairs aside to give her more room. Could it be a tarpaulin, a dust-sheet, something protective? The weather in the restaurant, by the way, was becoming increasingly challenging. The pats of butter now resisted spreading and it was difficult to avoid tearing the bread. Even before her revelation was complete, it was clear that this sheet was none other than a ploughed field, its waves of rich, brown soil covered inches thick with crisp, unsullied snow. Over the road which bordered it to the north was a medieval church of the East Anglian type with a majestic tower over its west end, no transepts and a luminous clerestory, all faced with flint flushwork. It was not of cathedral size, not nearly so impressive, but perhaps the grandest parish church that I had ever seen. Its emergence was a shock and a delight and I thought of those ships trapped in bottles but with the process somehow reversed. The headlights of a car passing on the north road cleaved a sudden flurry of sleet.
At last there seemed to be no more and she came over and sat at the table. Rather than speak, we looked out of the window at the silver moon, resplendent stars and the whole of the darkening universe, black as ink and as endless as time, which swept over us then like a round of applause.
She said, I hope you don’t mind, but I am very hungry.
Robert Stone lives in Ipswich and is now retired after thirty years’ work in a press cuttings agency. Stories have appeared in 3:AM, Stand, Panurge, Metachrosis, Confingo, Willesden Herald, Wraparound South, Lunate, Decadent Review, the Nightjar chapbook series and elsewhere. A story is included in Salt’s Best British Stories 2020.
