Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [39]
“You see,” said Dan, wagging his spoon at me, “I know the places to go.”
“Damn right,” said Tim. “Don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“Without me,” said Dan grandly, “you’d be like all the rest. Uncle Dan knows everything.” He had a slight lisp. He poured freely from the leather bottle and we drank. A girl with braids and a red bandanna sat on some wooden steps and played a mandolin, and I fell in love with her on the instant and knew that I would never leave this place, that I had found my true home at last and would now be happy for ever. The voice of the mandolin was a pealing cascade, unbearably sweet, making tears swell in my chest. There was singing, the mellow singing of happy drunken men. A very small kitten clawed its way up onto my knee, a sweet, purring thing that nuzzled into my armpit and commenced suckling. Dogs big and small roamed the shadows, under the table, in and out the door. Chickens, stalking, under and over, talking with their mad, sharp beaks ajar. Tim was gone. I looked around for him, but the room span, lovely, colours, the fire, the red bandanna, the blue cloaks. Dan was still there, peering at me humourously, a U-shaped, grinning mouth, small, close-together eyes set well back under a low, furrowed brow. Resting on an elbow, he leaned over the table and looked me in the eye. “Here’s something, Jaf,” he said. “Never forget.”
When Dan Rymer drank he became his true self. His eyes twinkled, his lips puckered, his limbs loosened up.
“What, Dan?” I laughed, made mad and bold by the strong red wine. It had a metallic edge and reminded me of that thin taste blood has when you bite your lip or your teeth bleed. “On with the words of wisdom!”
“That’s it,” he said, “just that. Never forget.”
“Never forget what?”
He was smoking a long, brown cheroot and he waved it elegantly, creating eddies of startlingly bright blue smoke. “That smoke,” he said seriously, “never forget the sight of that smoke as long as you live,” and he hummed “Tobacco’s But an Indian Weed.”
They brought us more wine, and some small cakes, very sweet and moist, bright yellow.
“These are good,” he said, tucking in, and we gorged ourselves, “these are the ultima thule of cakes. These cakes are what you were born for.” He grinned. His arm gestured in a loose circular movement. “Have you seen the Madonna?”
“What do you mean?” I asked stupidly, draining my glass and immediately wanting more, grabbing the bottle and pouring, spilling a few drops. You couldn’t see how much was in the bottle, but it was good and heavy. The kitten was dislodged from my armpit and slithered to the floor with a disgruntled mew.
“The Madonna,” Dan repeated, “come and see, she’s over the stairs.” I didn’t want to get up, but he’d risen and gestured me over to where the angel with the mandolin still produced heaven from the tips of her brown fingers.
I followed.
“Look,” he said, “one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see.”
I looked up. The real girl, the mandolin girl, was on my left-hand side. Her music had faded now, she twinged and twanged the instrument in a random, desultory manner. There was a painting at the top of the stairs, painted right on the wall, the Madonna spreading out her cloak, sheltering the world. How they do it, those paintings, some of the ones you see. You can’t see her eyes, but you know what they’re like, you just know.
“You know,” Dan Rymer said, breathing warm booze breath on me, “I have a wife.”
“I know,” I said.
“I love my wife.”
That tall, fair woman with babies at her skirts, in her arms. Greenland Dock. London. Dear London. Oh, Greenland Dock. Oh, fried fish and grey skies and the smell of the market on Watney Street as a new day dawns.
“She was born in the marshes,” he said, “out of town.”
“I saw her.”
“Saw her?”
“On the quay.”
“Of course,” he murmured, “of course you would have done.”
We gazed in a trance at the Madonna. I looked sideways and saw the mandolin player idly