by Robin Wrigley
campari and ruby grapefruit juice
On one of the centre aisle tables sits two elderly
ladies tucking into a meal as though it might be their last. Their table
fortified by various paraphernalia used to enable their perambulations. A blue
four-wheeled contraption with handlebars, brakes and a small satchel-bag made to
assist the user to remain upright while walking; a pair of metal and plastic
crutches for the other lady. There is very little conversation between them,
their concentration confined to their eating. As their father taught them as
children, ‘we come to the table to eat, not talk’.
At another table two well dressed women with a
young baby in a highchair to one side. The child seems happy and well-fed; its
podgy, pink cheeks gives the impression of a kookaburra chick seeking a feed
from an attentive mother hen as it takes intermittent sucks on a proffered
feeding bottle. After a satisfying gulp, happily pushing the bottle away and
attempting a small handclapping exercise that results in a rattle hitting the
ground for the ladies to retrieve.
Gerald sat there looking around as he did on the
Friday lunchtime’s he had been coerced into agreeing to meet his sister, Jenny
for lunch. She is late as usual. Fortunately, this assignation doesn’t happen
too often and after half an hour, she would realise they didn’t really have
anything in common and would invent a need to leave early. But at least it put
her mind to rest that she was maintaining family ties now that her husband
Frank, who passed two years ago, was no longer there to share her daily life.
Lucky bastard, Gerald thought, especially now he
was the listener to all of her ailments, a myriad of minor aches and pains that
nobody ever died of. He recalled with a wry smile one of the last times he
visited Frank in the general hospital with his sister. Though she was there to
visit her dying husband she used the time to recant her own physical ailments.
Frank had looked fed up and whispered to Gerald that ‘he wished her tongue was
as tired as his ears.’ Caught up in her own laments his remark escaped
her.
Gerald had returned from a lifetime in Africa where
at least he’d been happy as a celebrity by virtue of the colour of his skin and
his comparative wealth. Also there was the lovely Joyce who joined him most
weekends and never took anything for granted. They were the happiest years of
his life. Now, as he looked around he wondered why he had bothered to return to
this, his homeland.
He begins to think like a wildebeest, when the
grazing area goes deathly quiet because the herd has shifted, unbeknownst to the
animal who suddenly finds itself alone and vulnerable. For Gerald though, the
maddening silence is instead replaced with ceaseless chatter which proves far
more disconcerting than the eerie silence of the veldt.
He looks over to his left at the next table beyond
the elderly ladies, who having finished eating are discussing possible seconds.
Beyond them a middle aged couple sits without talking in that air of boredom
that surrounds two people whose only common attachment is a band of gold. They
are both well dressed for such a time and place; the small feathery headwear on
the lady probably indicates they are about to attend a wedding or some such
occasion and need to kill some time.
One table down from them sits another couple acting
out a familiar scene of the Spratt family. They are casually dressed and the
waitress is just serving their order. The man has a colourful, healthy looking
salad plate while the lady is served what appears to be a huge hamburger
accompanied by a miniature tin bucket of chunky chips stacked neatly on top.
They are big enough to act as wheel chocks for a light
aircraft.
On her return to the counter the waitress
approaches Gerald’s table; she stops to say that his wife has just arrived
indicating with her eyes the entrance door. He follows her gaze in a dream
thinking it might be the ebony features of Joyce but no a tall thin woman
dressed in mauve is waving to him, a cool smile under newly coiffured
hair.
‘Oh that’s just my sister.' He sighs. 'Thankfully,
not my wife. She won’t stay long.’
