Eight letters starting with M – Chelsey Flood
November 27th, 2008 | Published in Volume II: Wastelands
I’m sitting at the bar doing the Guardian crossword. I’ve been stuck on six down all morning: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. Eight letters starting with M.
Razzle dings the food bell and shouts from the kitchen.
“Remember to push the cake!”
“I’m only asking them if they want cake if they look like they might. It’s not Clare’s Accessories.”
“How can you tell if a person wants cake?” A bald man asks from one of the sofas. “Do I look like the sort of person that would want cake?”
I look at him for a bit.
“…No, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have offered you any cake.”
He tuts. He’s the kind of person that isn’t actually fat but as soon as he’s not there and you’re imagining him you think he’s fat. I bet people tell him he’s lost weight all the time.
He looks offended, so I ask him if he wants any cake.
“No,” he says after a pause. “I don’t really like cake.”
A filthy man falling onto the empty barrels outside interrupts my concentration.
Please don’t come in here, please don’t come in here, please don’t come in here.
He walks through the door.
He looks surprised and I wonder what he was expecting, a sequinned floor show, perhaps. The way he looks at me, squinting and disappointed, I wish I was wearing a leotard.
He stands swaying, peering out at me from underneath bushy red eyebrows.
“I’mhomeless,” he says eventually, “Gotanyscraps?”
His words fall into each other and he exhales them noisily like they’ve worn him out.
I’m distracted by the way he’s moving his head. The way he’s struggling to hold it up reminds me of those puppets you used to see in the street, really basic marionettes with luminous, striped fur, massive heads looming in front of their bodies.
“You can have a cup of tea and a biscuit if you like?” I offer, wanting to get back to my crossword.
He doesn’t look impressed. His tongue lolls on the verge of saying something and he widens his squint a little, but nothing.
“I could put it in a take away cup for you?”
“No,” he stutters. “Wantscraps. I’mhomelessanstarvin.”
It’s hard for him to get his words out because it’s quarter past eleven in the morning and he’s already this wasted.
“This is just the bar.” I tell him. “You’ll have to ask the kitchen. Go and ask the chef.”
The man stays where he is, his eyes beginning to close.
I raise my voice and point towards the kitchen, which is just two metres away, but blocked out of sight by a pillar.
“This is the bar. That is the kitchen. Ask the chef.”
The man stays where he is, squinting out at me from his wiggly marionette’s head.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll go.”
The chef looks amused when she sees me at the hatch.
“Did he enjoy his little ride on the barrels?”
“I think so. He’s homeless, have you got any scraps?”
I feel self-conscious saying scraps, like I’m a Dickensian waif. I don’t know why. There’s no reason I can think of to be embarrassed about the word scraps.
Razzle repeats it with a question mark, then tweaks imaginary braces and turns her knees out for a little jig. She pushes a plate with half a dishevelled chocolate cake towards me and raises her eyebrows.
“It looks shit, but it tastes okay.”
I laugh at the idea of presenting a homeless man with a massive slab of cake.
“Serviette?” she grins.
I’m about to ask if chocolate cake’s okay when I see his hand is in the box of poppies on the bar. Turning his head vaguely in my direction, he starts to pull it out, grabbing a handful of the little flowers as he does so. Green plastic stalks poke out between his blunt, cracked fingers.
“They’re for charity, you can’t take those! They’re for the soldiers.”
I sound ridiculous and I’m confused. Should I just let him have the poppies? He doesn’t seem to have much else. I hope the man who didn’t look like he wanted cake isn’t listening to this.