Popper's In The Wine

When Marjorie ran off with the bird cages, I, for one, expected never to see her again. After all, thieves rarely return to the scene of their crimes.

It was only when my wife suggested we actually sought the thief out in her lair, I began to have my doubts. However, it was unlikely that the trail would be hot enough to follow.

"We trusted her, didn't we? Gave her the run of the house and all that." My wife swept a flick of hair from her eyes. She had suspected Marjorie of many things, but pilfering was not one of them. I found my wife more attractive than Marjorie, but looks were not everything. I maintained that the wormcast of Trill in the middle of the living-room carpet was not proof positive. After all, clues were suspect, too.

In the end, I decided to go off on my own, leaving my wife to look after things at home, in case anything turned up there.

I arrived at a godforsaken seaside resort the main road of which along the front became the dead end of a roofed precinct, with downgraded cafes and amusement arcades where the sun couldn't reach. It didn't seem to matter, though.

My wife WAS accompanying me, really, or someone who looked very much like her. In the end, we decided there was no need for someone to stay at home. After all, it was not important - just bricks and mortar together with a few memories which would fade in time.

We determined to find something to drink in the precinct. Spoilt for choice, we walked into an open-fronted establishment which appeared to be an eating-place with set tables, as well as a bar. There were many empty seats and I did not predict being questioned by an officious lady who purported to be an employee of the establishment.

"These tables are only for chance visitors, unexpected customers," she said, looking straight at me and pointblanking my wife.

"Chance visitors?" I said, expecting her to explain further. I felt confident because I was in the right of things. There was a feast of vacant tables, after all.

"If you like, I'll go off and find Jane Clifford..." She said this as if she assumed we knew who the dickens Jane Clifford was.

That must be the manageress, I thought, without giving too much away. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and, taking my wife by the hand, left the establishment for the dowdy arcade outside.

Imagine my surprise (and delight) when we saw Marjorie, with her back to us, staring into a Cut Glass and China shop opposite. If it hadn't been for the officious lady, we would have missed Marjorie altogether, since she immediately swept off like a bird of prey. I even began to wonder whether we'd seen her at all.

Jane Clifford munched breakfast as slowly as she could since, as soon as she was seen to finish her last mouthful, she would be told to clear the tables and start the washing-up. With luck, there would only be a handful of customers today, what with the weather and the rest of it. The couple she had watched earlier perched on bar stools had been quickly seen off. She had almost recognised them from a past which was not exactly her own ... like younger versions of her Popper and Mommer. It was a pity drink had addled Popper's mind which had meant he had addled Jane's with his silly talk and ways. She would cry tonight, on Marjorie's shoulder. She enjoyed crying more than anything. It was a way of life with some people...

The rain could be heard teeming upon the precinct roof as if the sky was full of weeping angels. Jane laid her dirty plates one on top of the other and slowly got up. The wind brought the sound of the sea nearer. The customers were mainly casual in such a place. Once seen, always forgotten. The passing trade like wind blowing itself out. A small living, but hard work. Still, she had been born with a greasy spoon in her mouth.

Marjorie was the only person Jane Clifford knew capable of keeping sea-gulls as pets.

Jane Clifford was chagrined to see that the middle-aged couple had returned to the cafe. Perhaps their previous reception had been insufficiently hostile. Worse - they had the effrontery to sit at the same chance visitors' table. She started to devise a piece of invective worthy of their crass behaviour.

Before Jane Clifford had time to compose her speech, much less deliver it, Tracy Pritchard went to the table. Tracy Pritchard, strident sixteen, and an Australian soap opera fan, would have been better employed in a baker's shop - at least in Jane Clifford's opinion. Wrapping seedy bloomers while discussing boy friends was the highest thing to which her kind could aspire. She had not even attempted a professional waitress sneer let alone a chipped varnish nail in the doughnut cream.

In any case, Tracy Pritchard had been hired on the strict understanding that she would serve only regulars. Not, of course, that there were any regulars - not in a place like that. Nor did the fact of this couple coming in twice make them regulars. A regular had to be profoundly grateful for the dishwater tea and, if Jane Clifford could help it, no one would so much as order the doubtful beverage.

Jane Clifford stared aghast as Tracy Pritchard wrote something on her pad. Returning to the counter, Tracy Pritchard took the sticky bath bun which had been the principle ornament under the glass dome since the end of the season. It had been earmarked - if a bun can be earmarked, rather than fly specked - for Marjorie's sea gulls. Tracy Pritchard placed it on the table.

"This table is only for chance visitors," Jane Clifford told them, snatching up the bun.

"Easy, lass. Like I told the other girl, we are chance visitors."

"Then Tracy Pritchard had no right to serve you - she deals only with regulars."

"And you?"

"I serve chance visitors."

"Then can we have the bath bun?"

"No - you've been here before - so you're regulars."

"In that case Tracy Pritchard had every right to give us the bun."

"No she hadn't - it's reserved for Marjorie's sea gulls."

"Marjorie? Not...?"

"No, she is not the Marjorie who took the bird cages. Don't be stupid. How could anyone fit as big a bird as a sea gull into one of your cages?"

"That's true, lass, but..."

I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was something in Jane Clifford's story that didn't make sense. The little doors in the cages were made for nothing bigger than budgies. Inserting a sea gull would surely involve dismembering it first. What would be the point in feeding a bath bun to a dismembered sea gull?

On that score I couldn't fault Jane Clifford's protestations. Perhaps it was a sixth sense that warned me something was wrong. My wife was quite correct - there are more Marjories than one in this world. All the same, I started to follow Jane Clifford when she left work.

Three times I was arrested. Indecent exposure? - surely not. I pleaded guilty only to indecent concealment. The magistrate was very decent about it, and gave me three months.

In between slopping out times in the converted sea front hotel, there were visits from local dignitaries. The mayoress lectured me on the true significance of the borough motto. When the president and sole member of the sea gull fanciers' club made the rounds of the cells, I didn't expect to see Marjorie. She looked older now, but still had Trill beneath her nails.

"So, Jane Clifford was lying," I said.

"Not entirely, I am a different Marjorie every day. Some Greek bloke taught that one cannot step in the same stream once."

When she made that typical throwaway line, I couldn't help thinking of all those single women often seen talking to themselves in barely patronised out-of-season seaside cafes and wondering whether they were merely different versions of Marjorie.

"But why did you take the cages, you wicked girl?"

"I loved both you and your wife equally. Perhaps I pitied your childlessness - not that I was young enough to do anything about it. You were too long in the tooth to appreciate it, in any case... Not so much in the body as in the mind..."

"I couldn't bring myself to tell my wife that you loved me - nor the nature of my reciprocation."

"Well - just go straight when you're released. Promise me that much."

"Go straight where? In any case, none of this explains about Jane Clifford..."

"Even waitresses need love. Even caged birds..."

"I suppose all that explains the bird cages and the endless holidays away from home and the way I treated my wife. I tagged her leg, so I'd recognise her if I came across her in unusual circumstances. Not that she was a homing pigeon, nor a foreign bird of prey, nor even a budgie with a jingly mirror..."

Marjorie had already gone. I stared through my barred window at the rain drenched esplanade, feeling as though I were a caged bird. Don't they call the likes of me jail birds? I wondered about the holiday makers who had once paid to stay in this room - did they, too, feel imprisoned?

I could see Marjorie leaving what had once been the hotel lobby. She pulled her collar up against the October gale. It looked as though she was heading for the pier. Far above, the sea gulls wheeled in the gathering storm.

(published 'Lateral Moves' 1998)

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