The tray
didn't just hit the floor. It crashed and smashed his lunch to pieces. Serves
you damn well right, I thought. You were staring again.
He stood stock-still and looked down at the food.
Suddenly I got up and moved towards him. I hadn't intended to, hadn't wanted to
help him. I called to the woman behind the counter. She closed her mouth and
brought a cloth to clean up the mess. I picked up crockery, put it on the tray.
There was a soppy stain on his trousers and through it you could see just how
bony his knees were. Like the rest of him. All bones, dangling jacket and
hanging trousers. Stooped shoulders and mile-long arms. Then he smiled at me. A
wonderful smile that creased up his worn face and totally surprised me.
"Thank you."
I shoved the tray at him and went back to my table.
I worked at a large publishing company and ate lunch in
the canteen. I had noticed him because he stared at me. He was weird-looking.
His hair was badly cut and his clothes were ancient and dull; too-short
corduroys, baggy at the knees and colour-less sweaters, dotted with fluff.
Often he sat alone and just picked at his food. Or he read and jotted things
down.
A few days after the crash, he stopped at the table I
was sharing with Mark from proof reading, and asked if he might sit down. I
said the seats were taken and continued eating. He apologised and took his tray
off somewhere else.
"What's your problem, Leanna?" asked Mark.
"No problem. It's just that I like to choose who I
share my mealtimes with."
"A bit rough on the old chap though."
I shrugged.
It was Mark who told me more about him. He had gone over
to scrounge a cigarette. By the time he came back to the table, I had my head
stuck into the news-paper.
"Interesting chap. Sub-editor. Been all over the
world," said Mark.
I decided to find the newspaper more interesting and
finally Mark shut up and finished smoking.
"Asked your name," he said.
"He what?"
"Yeah."
"What'd you say?"
"Leanna, of course."
I folded the newspaper.
"I've loads of work this afternoon."
"Said you look familiar," said Mark.
"Like someone he knew."
"Someone he knew?"
"Yeah. Could be strategy. Maybe he fancies
you."
"Fancies me? But he's old."
"Only old enough to be your father."
I grabbed my tray and left the table.
I didn't do much work that afternoon. I kept wishing
Mark hadn't said what he had said. Old enough to be your father.
The following week I took along a book to read during
lunchtime. When I got into the lift on my floor, he was already inside. He
greeted me so I had to reply but I didn't smile. We were alone and that worried
me. I wondered whether I should get out at the next floor and walk up the
stairs to the canteen. Don't panic, I thought. Just because he's stared at you
for ages doesn't mean he's going to do anything.
" Well, I suppose one of us should press the button
or we'll be here all day, won't we?"
I'd been so busy wondering what he was going to do and
expecting him to do something, that I'd completely forgotten to do anything
myself. I felt like an idiot and this made me smile and I hadn't wanted to. He
smiled back, his blue eyes crinkling right up to the grey hair at his ears and
making him look ... nice. Then there was a slap. My book hit the floor. I bent
down and so did he, and we bashed heads. At that moment, the lift shuddered to
a stop and the doors seemed to fling themselves wide open. I was so embarrassed,
I marched out of the lift, straight towards the queue at the counter. I ordered
without looking at the menu and took my tray to a table where there was only
one empty seat. I breathed a sigh of relief and began to eat. But the salad
stuck in my throat when I noticed that everyone else at the table had already
finished lunch and they were getting up to go. I glanced over at the counter.
He was paying and in a second, his eyes would scan the room to find me. I
ducked my head. Waited. Any minute now he'd sit down with his tray.
Short Stories from Australasia .
My book appeared in front of my eyes. His fingers were the longest I'd seen and
his nails were manicured. I hadn't thought he'd bother.
"You left it in the lift," he said. "May
I sit down?"
His voice was soft. Cultivated. What could I say? The
tables were all pretty full so I nodded. He said bon appétit and began to eat.
I'd always thought he picked at his food. But as I watched, I noticed that he
selected small pieces, speared them and moved them carefully to his mouth.
"Have you been there?"
"Been where?" I was totally dazed. From
dropping my book and banging my head and everything.
"Australia, New Zealand."
I stared at him and thought again of what Mark had said
about me reminding him of someone. An Australian? Maybe an ex-girlfriend or
wife?
"Not such a strange question," he said.
"You're old enough to have travelled there. And Katherine Mansfield, Janet
Frame, are most likely in the book."
His smile crinkled up his eyes.
"No, I haven't and yes, they are," I said.
That's how it started. He asked me a question, nodded
when I spoke and then asked another. I was off, talking about reading, books
and all that stuff I love.
Days later Malcolm passed our table with his tray and
spontaneously I said a seat was free. Mark stared at me and I felt a rush of
heat to my cheeks.
After that, Malcolm often sat with us and he and I
discussed a lot of things. We spoke a little about ourselves too. I told him
how Mom had brought me up on her own at the start of the Hippie Era. He said he
had married during that time but divorced a few
years later. Mark asked me how come Malcolm and I always
had so much to talk about.
"He's easy to talk to. And he reads a lot."
"You two got so much to say, I don't get a chance
to open my mouth all lunch-time."
"You do. You shove food in."
One lunchtime Malcom asked me if I'd like to go to a
reading with him.
"Um. Don't know."
"Amelia Turner. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
last year."
I wanted very much to go. But although I no longer
thought Malcolm quite so weird, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go out in his
company.
"Afterwards, I'll cook us curry. Do you like it?
"
"Love it."
"Me too. Settled then?" he asked and smiled
his soft smile.
It didn't surprise me that I nodded.
After the reading and the curry dinner, I went into
Malcolm's sitting room where there were more books than I'd ever seen on
anyone's shelves. I began to read the titles.
"Help yourself," said Malcolm.
"Thanks. But if I read a book, I have add it to my
collection."
"Strange, same here." He waved his arms
towards the shelves. "But look where it's got me."
"I'd hate to be without books. They're ...
friends."
"That sounds like lonely," said Malcolm.
I turned and pulled out a book.
"Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Lonely?"
I shrugged.
"Not really."
"Not really but what?"
My voice came from a distance as I tried to answer him.
"I'm choosy about my friends. Don't have a great
many."
"I'm listening," said Malcolm and sat down,
indicating the armchair opposite him.
"My childhood was ... I mean, my mother loved
moving around. She had no trouble putting down roots all over the place. I
hated it! Books were the constant things, so I buried myself in them."
"Hell, sounds familiar."
I sat down in the armchair.
"I had very academic parents," said Malcolm.
"Was an afterthought, perhaps a mistake even. They loved me in their vague
intellectual way but left me alone to get on with growing up. Hence the
books."
"That's lonely, too," I said.
When I left, I took along a couple of Malcolm's books.
My friendship with Malcolm grew but my curiousity
remained. Who did I remind him of? My mother? If so, could he be my father?
Although Mom had never bothered with books, our physical similarities, apart
from my tallness, were undeniable. She had never told me much about the man who
had fathered me. Clever, was all she had usually said. Once though, when I had
been ill with chicken pox, and hot and scratchy, she had relented.
"What was he like?"
"Skinniest man you ever saw."
"Where'd you meet him?"
"In a park. I was catching a suntan and these
papers started blowin' in my face. I was a bit cheesed off at them blowin' all
over me and then this man comes runnin'. He grabbed and grabbed but couldn't
catch them all. So he jus' stood still, a helpless look on his face. It was so
funny, I started laughin'."
"And then?"
"I helped and we chased all over the place after
them papers. When we sat down to get our breath back, he told me he was a
student. He was ever so clever. Can't re-member what the devil it was he was
studyin'. Somethin' I'd never heard of then or since."
"Why didn't you marry him?"
"Marry him? Good Lord, Leanna, I wasn't ready to
marry and he wasn't the type I'd have wanted to marry by a long shot."
"What else did he look like, Mom?"
"Lord, stop the questions, child. Get some sleep."
She saw my disappointment however, and said she would
write it all down for me. Put it in an envelope to open when she was dead and
gone. I was happy with that. On a wet, slick highway, driving to France for a
weekend, she was involved in an accident and died instantly. I was twenty-three
then and on my own feet but as I sorted through and packed up the belongings in
her flat, I felt like a child again. I looked for the envelope but didn't find
one. For a long time after, my mother's death and not knowing who my father
was, made me feel as though I was drifting on a sea without horizons.
One lunchtime I just decided to brave it and ask Malcolm
who I reminded him of.
"Met her while I was a student," he said.
"Was she studying too?"
"Oh, heavens, no. That was what attracted me to
her. She was ... so different."
"What were you like?" I asked.
"Like? Much as I am now. Nose in books, bit of a
loner. Not very interesting. Not for a live wire like she was."
"Go on," I said.
"She fell pregnant. I was very happy until she told
me she didn't want my help. Thought she'd change her mind, though, as the
pregnancy advanced but when I attempted to see her, she told me to leave her
be. I was very hurt but accepted her refusal to involve me. A few months later,
I took a job I'd been offered in New York. Salary was dreadful but I thought it
would be for the best."
"Was it? " I asked.
"No. When I returned, they'd moved. Left no
forwarding address."
"So you never knew whether it was a boy or ...?
"
"A girl?" asked Malcolm.
I nodded.
"A boy," he said. "Had the approximate
date and went to the Registry of Births to look it up."
I sat there, trying to take in what Malcom had said. I
felt as though I'd been flattened by a truck.
"Somewhere out there I have a child I know nothing
about," Malcom continued. "I was stupid. Rushed off instead of
staying to have a share in my son's life."
"I thought perhaps it was a daughter."
"Beg your pardon?"
"A daughter. Me."
"You thought I was ... your father?"
"Books, curry, I'm tall. We ... we like the same
things."
"We definitely have things in common but I'm not
your father." He looked at me.
"I'm so sorry to disappoint you, Leanna." I
tried to smile.
"We're not related but we can be something
else."
"What?"
"Can't you think of anything?"
"Uh uh."
"Friends."
"Friends?"
"It's been staring you in the face for weeks."
Malcolm's use of that phrase made me burst out laughing.
"Let me in on the joke sometime," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Tell you sometime seeing
we're friends."
Then I smiled. And my smile was as wide and warm as the
one he smiled in return.
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