The Three Button Trick: Selected stories - Nicola Barker 5 стр.


Fifteen minutes later, damp, mussed, muddy, Gillian finally located the wiper. Mr Kip fixed it back on, but when he turned the relevant switch on the dash, neither of the wipers moved. He cursed like crazy.

Well, thats that, he said, and glared at Gillian like it was her fault completely. They sat and sat. It kept right on raining.

Finally Gillian couldnt stand it a minute longer. Give me your tie, she ordered. Mr Kip grumbled but did as shed asked. Gillian clambered out of the car and attached the tie to one of the wipers.

OK, she said, trailing the rest of the tie in through Mr Kips window. Now we need something else. Are you wearing a belt?

Mr Kip shook his head.

Something long and thin, Gillian said, like a rope.

Mr Kip couldnt think of anything.

Shut your eyes, Gillian said. Mr Kip shut his eyes, but after a moment, naturally, he peeped.

And what a sight! Gillian laboriously freeing herself from some panties which looked as bare and sparse and confoundedly stringy as a pirates eye patch.

Good gracious! Mr Kip exclaimed. You could at least have worn some French knickers or cami-knickers or something proper. Those are preposterous!

Gillian turned on him. Ive really had it with you, Colin, she snarled, with your silly, affected, old-fashioned car and clothes and everything.

From her bag Gillian drew out her Swiss Army Knife and applied it with gusto to the plentiful elastic on her G-string. Then she tied one end to the second wiper and pulled the rest around and through her window. Right, she said, start up the engine.

Colin Kip did as he was told. Gillian manipulated the wipers manually; left, right, left, right. All superior and rhythmical and practical and dour-faced.

Mr Kip was very impressed. He couldnt help himself. After several minutes of driving in silence he took his hand off the gearstick and slid it on to Gillians lap.

Watch it, Gillian said harshly. Dont you dare provoke me, Colin. I havent put my Swiss Army Knife away yet.

She felt the pressure of his hand leave her thigh. She was knickerless. She was victorious. She was a truly modern female.

The Three Button Trick

Jack had won Carries heart with that old three button trick.

At the genesis of every winter, Jack would bring out his sturdy but ancient grey duffel coat and massage the toggles gently with the tips of his fingers. Hed pick off any fluff or threads from its rough fabric, brush it down vigorously with the flat of his hand and then gradually ease his way into it. One arm, two arms, shift it on to his shoulders, balance it rightthe tips of the sleeves both perfectly level with each wristthen straighten the collar.

Finally, the toggles. The most important part. Hed do them one-handed, pretending, even to himself, some kind of casualness, a studiedif fallaciouspreoccupation, his eyes unfocused, imagining, for example, how it felt when he was a small boy learning to tell the time. His father had shown him: ten past, quarter past, see the little hand? See the big hand? But he hadnt learned. It simply didnt click.

So Jacks mother took over instead. She had her own special approach. The way she saw it, any child would learn anything if they thought there was something in it for them: a kiss or a toy or a cookie.

Jacks mother baked Jack a Clock Cake. Each five-minute interval on the cakes perimeter was marked with a tangy, candied, lemon segment. The first slice was taken from the midday or midnight point at the very top of the cake and extended to the first lemon segment on the right, which, Jack learned, signified five minutes past the hour. If the little hand is on the twelve, his mother told him, then your slice takes the big hand to five minutes past twelve.

Jack wrinkled up his nose. How about if I have a ten past twelve slice? he suggested.

He got what hed asked for.

Jack was born in Wisconsin but moved to London in his early twenties and got a job as a theatrical producer. Hed already worked extensively off-off Broadway. He met Carrie waiting for a bus on a Sunday afternoon outside the National Portrait Gallery. It was the winter of 1972. He was wearing his duffel coat.

Carrie was a blonde who wore her hair in big curls, had milk-pudding skin and breasts like a roomy verandah on the front of her bodys smart Georgian townhouse frame. Close up she smelled like a bowl of Multi-flavoured Cheerios.

Before Jack had even smelled her, though, he smiled at her. She smiled in return, glanced awayas girls are wont to doand then glanced back again. Just as hed hoped, her eyes finally settled on the toggles on his coat. She pointed. She grinned. Your buttons

Huh?

The buttons on your coat. Youve done them up all wrong.

He looked down and pretended surprise. I have?

Jack held his hands aloft, limply, gave her a watery smile but made no attempt to righten them. Carrie, in turn, put her hand to her curls. She imagined that Jack must be enormously clever to be so vague. Maybe a scientist or a schoolteacher at a boys private school or maybe a philosophy graduate. Not for a moment did it dawn on her that he might be a fool. And that was sensible, because he was no fool.

Carrie met Sydney two decades later, while attending self-defence classes. Sydney had long, auburn ringlets and freckles and glasses. She was Australian. Her father owned a vineyard just outside Brisbane. Sydney was a sub-editor on a bridal magazine. She was strong and bare and shockingly independent. On the back of her elbows, Carrie noticed, the skin was especially thick and in the winter she had to apply Vaseline to this area because otherwise her skin chapped and cracked and became inflamed. The reason, Sydney informed Carrie, that her elbows got so chapped, was that she was very prone to resting her weight on them when she sat at her desk, and also, late at night, when she lay in bed reading or thinking, sometimes for hours.

Sydney was thirty years old and an insomniac. Had been since puberty. As a teenager shed kept busy during the long night hours memorizing the type-of-grape in the type-of-wine, from-which-vineyard and of-what-vintage. Also she collected wine labels which she stuck into a special jotter.

Nowadays, however, shed spend her wakeful night-times thinking about broader subjects: men she met, men she fancied, men shed dated, men shed two-timed, and if none of these subjects seemed pertinent or topicalduring the dry season, as she called itwell, then shed think about her friends and their lives and how her life connected with theirs and what they both wanted and what they were doing wrong and how and why.

Carrie appreciated Sydneys attentiveness. If Jack had been working late, if Jack kept mentioning the name of an actress, if Jack told her that her skin looked sallow or her roots were showing, well, then she would tell Sydney about it and Sydney would spend the early hours of every morning, resting on her elbows and mulling it all over.

Sydney had a suspicion that Jack was up to something anti-matrimonial and had hinted as much to Carrie. Hinted, but nothing more. Carrie, however, took only what she wanted from Sydneys observations and left the rest. In conversational terms, she was a fussy eater.

Jack walked out on Carrie after twenty-one years of marriage, two days before her forty-fourth birthday. The following night, after hed packed up and gone, she and Sydney skipped their karate class and sat in the leisure centres bar instead. Sydney ordered two bottles of Bordeaux. She wasnt in the least bit perturbed by Carries predicament. In fact, she was almost pleased because shed anticipated that this would happen a while ago and was secretly gratified by the wholesale accuracy of her prediction.

Youre still a babe, Carrie, Sydney whispered, pouring her some more wine. You could have any man.

I dont want any man, Carrie whimpered. I only want Jack. Only Jack. Only him.

That guy Alan, Sydney noted, who takes the Judo class. I know he likes you. Sometimes it seems like his eyes are stuck to your tits with adhesive.

Please!

Its true.

Jack only walked out yesterday, Sydney, probably for a girl fifteen years my junior. You really think I care about anything else at the moment?

Sydney had great legs; long and lithe and small-kneed. Gazelle legs, llama legs. She crossed them.

Im simply observing that Jack isnt the only shark in the ocean.

Carrie took a tissue from her sports bag and dusted her cheeks with it.

I remember the very first time I ever met Jack, waiting for a bus outside the National Portrait Gallery. A Sunday afternoon. He had his coat buttoned up all wrong and I pointed it out to him and we started talking Carrie stopped speaking and hiccuped.

Sydney chewed her bottom lip. That old three button trick, she was thinking. The slimy bastard.

You know, Carrie, she said sweetly. Youre still so beautiful. Youre still the biggest lily in the pond. Youre still floating on the surface and bright enough to catch the attention of any insect or amphibian that might just happen to be passing. She paused. Even a heron, she added, as an afterthought.

Carrie scrabbled in her sports bag. She grabbed her purse, opened it, took out a twenty-pound note to pay the barman for the bottles of wine.

My treat, Sydney interjected.

Carrie paid him anyway. She was about to shut her purse but then paused and delved inside it.

Look, she said, her voice trembling, holding aloft a blue card.

Sydney put out her hand. What is it?

Our season ticket to the ballet. We went every week. It was one of those routines

Well, Sydney took the ticket and perused it, you shall go to the ball, Cinders.

What?

You and me. Well go together. When is it?

Wednesday.

Sydney handed the card back. Fine.

As it turned out, Sydney couldnt make it. She rang Carrie at the last minute. Carrie answered the phone wrapped up in a towel, pink from a hot bath.

What? You cant make it?

But I want you to go, anyway. Find someone else.

There is no one else. It doesnt matter, though. I wasnt really in the mood myself.

Carrie, youve got to go. Alone if needs be. Its the principle of the thing

I know, but its just

What?

Its kind of like a regular box and we share it with some other people and if I go alone

So? Thats great. It means you wont feel entirely isolated, which is ideal.

And then theres this fat old man called Heinz whos always there. A complete bore. We really hate him.

Heinz?

Yes. Jack always found him such a pain. We even tried to get a transfer

Bollocks. Just go. Ignore him. Whats the ballet?

Petrushka.

Yip!

Ive seen it before. Its not one of my particular favourites.

Go anyway. Youve got to start forging your own path, Carrie. Youll thank me after. Honestly.

Shed made a special effort, with her hair and her make-up. She was wearing a dress that shed bought for the previous Christmas. It was a glittery burgundy colour. Her lips matched. The box was empty when she arrived. She felt stupid. She sat down.

After five minutes, a couple she knew only to say hello to arrived and took their seats. They smiled and nodded at Carrie. She did the same in return. She then paged through her programme and pretended that she wasnt overhearing their conversation about the kind of conservatory they should build on to the back of their house. He wanted a big one that could fit a table to seat at least six. She wanted a small, bright retreat full of orchids and tomato plants.

Carrie kept reading and rereading the names of the principal dancers. The orchestras preparatory honking and parping jangled in her throat and with her nerves. She closed her eyes. I will count to ten. One, two, three, four

Ooof! Here we go, here we go!

Heinz, squeezing his way over to his seat, pushing his considerable bulk between the two rows of chairs.

Oi! Hup! There we are.

Carrie opened her eyes and stared at him. He had a box of chocolate brazils in one hand and a bulging Selfridges bag in the other, which he almost, but couldnt quite, fit into the gap between his knees and the front of the box.

Carries gut rumbled her antipathy. He smelled, alwaysas Jack had noted on many an occasionof wine gums and Deep Heat. An old smell. He must have been in his eighties, wore a grey-brown toupee and weighed in, she guessed, like a prize bull, at around three hundred and twenty pounds.

Carrie converted this weight into stone and then back again to occupy herself.

Heinz nodded at her. She nodded back. He always wore a sludge-coloured bow tie. It hung like a shiny little brown turd, poised under his chin.

Heinz endeavoured, with a great harrumphing, to find adequate room by his knees for his bag. Uh-oh! Uh-oh!

Carrie gritted her teeth.

If you havent room for your shopping, this chair is empty. She indicated Jacks empty seat which separated them.

Empty? Really? That lovely man of yours isnt with you tonight? Empty, you say? He wheezed as he spoke, like an asthmatic Persian feline, which made his German accent even more pronounced.

Youd think, Carrie speculated, that a wheeze would take the hard edges off a German accent, but youd be wrong to think so.

Would you mindclose to her earif I sat next to you and put my bag on the other seat?

My God! Carrie thought, fixing her eyes on the stage curtains and breathing a sigh of relief at their preliminary twitchings.

Brazil?

Ten minutes in, Heinz was whispering to her.

What?

Brazil? Go on. Have one.

No, thank you.

Go on!

No. I dont actually like brazils. Nuts give me hives.

Heinz closed the box and rested it on his lap.

During the intermission, Heinz regaled Carrie with tales about the relative exclusivity of the Turner and Booker prizes. He liked the opera, it turned out, especially Mozart. He found camomile tea to be excellent for sleeplessness. He was a widower of seven years.

Carrie noticed how the boxs other regulars smiled at her sympathetically whenever they caught her eye. It was odd, really, because actually, with increased acquaintance, Heinz wasnt all that bad. In fact, if anything, hed made her the centre of attention in the box. The focus, the axis. She felt rather like Princess Margaret opening a day care centre in Fulham.

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