Pretty Things

By Kevin Walsh

Photo by Maksym Sirman on Unsplash

Listen to a reading of this story by Kevin:

Clouds of small fingerprints surrounded Oscar’s hands as he stood on the window ledge, fascinated by the display of superheroes. Tina kept her hand on his back. The electric-blue light from the insect trap lent a cinematic quality to the figurines, and their action poses and background scenery must have been a big draw before the shelling forced the mall to close.

Oscar pointed to one of the toys.

‘Mum, will they have MoonHunter in Dublin?’

‘Of course, love.’

Later, as they moved through deserted arcades lit by the ghostly insect traps, Oscar repeated the same question with dogged persistence, as if gathering irrefutable assurance. Tina glanced backwards once, and the shadowy emptiness added urgency to her attempts to steer Oscar onwards. Abruptly they arrived at the exit door. With a touch it flew open into an unnerving brightness, but no one looked up as they walked in.

It was the café, just as promised. A few people, well wrapped up, sat on their own amidst a sea of empty tables. Autumnal sunlight invaded from a shattered wall, the opening toothed with broken masonry. Oscar slipped from her hand and ran to an aquarium, the centrepiece of the room. It was teeming with brightly coloured fish. Tina vainly called him back, afraid he would go too near the edge. The aroma of coffee heightened everything, including her fear.

A man stood up from a table near the damaged wall, speaking with authority and pointing to scaffolding fixed as a guardrail. Tina knew enough of the language to catch his meaning. Feeling a little foolish, she thanked him. He approached. Most men in the city were in army fatigues or the stained jackets of the auxiliary services but he wore a fine wool overcoat, a long scarf and a suit. She put her hand on his shoulder, smiling, partly to keep him at a distance and partly, perhaps, to touch him, to persuade herself he was real. Her fingers sank into clean fabric.

‘Sorry, can you speak English?’

‘Yes,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Your perfume is wonderful. No one makes the effort anymore.’

Something in his voice loosened her sense of time, as though she was between dreaming and waking. Tina embraced him, continental style, it having become a habit, and then impulsively kissed his cheek. His body leaned forward and Tina dropped into a chair to escape his encircling arms. She blushed. Oscar was staring at the man.

Tina laughed nervously. ‘Oh god, I didn’t mean that.’ She looked up.

‘Let me start again. My name is Stanislav, or Stanley if you wish.’

‘Tina. This is my son, Oscar.’ She bit her lip, half afraid of a lecture for taking Oscar out of the blue zone.

‘Are you staying or being evacuated?’

‘In thirty-two days we’ll be flying home to Ireland.’

‘Good. I was afraid you had made the mistake of marrying one of us.’

They laughed. He took a chair from the nearest table.

Tina beckoned Oscar over. ‘I was supposed to start teaching in the University a few weeks ago, but the fighting changed everything. Classes are on-line so I can continue giving the module from Dublin.’ She began to waffle, as she often did when she was embarrassed. She felt such a fool for relocating to a country that shortly afterwards began to tear itself apart. Oscar’s shoulders burrowed into her.

‘Let me order something,’ said Stanley, ‘I work here as a volunteer since the…’ He half turned to look towards the street. ‘They have fresh pastries today.’ Then, to Oscar, ‘Flavoured ice creams too; the counter is downstairs.’

Oscar took the man’s proffered hand and Tina followed at a distance. The handrail was cold; she thought of the maze of steps in the multi-storied café she’d loved as a student and the endless quixotic conversations where no one wanted to be the first to leave. Then the mad rush back for tutorials, the fastest runner tasked with the excuses. The pavements clotted with tourists. Before Oscar. Before the fruitless struggle to get a place of her own. Oscar’s excited voice broke her reverie.

Stanley carried a tray with evident pride. Two coffee cups, a plate with two pastries and a single knife, and an ice cream sundae.

‘There,’ said Stanley. ‘Almost as pretty as the fish!’

Tina coaxed a thank you from Oscar and added her own. ‘A sundae! I haven’t seen those since the war started!’

Stanley winced. Tina reprimanded herself. ‘War’ was a dirty word; ‘hostilities’ was preferred in the media, as in a cessation of hostilities is imminent. In the less partial news from home, the rebels and the government were described as being locked in a conflict. Not even a small war.

She picked at her doughnut, thinking of saving some for later. Oscar ate his ice cream at a restrained pace. Stanley chatted to Oscar, telling him what he did - watched films - and where he lived – by the river - whilst deftly producing a napkin from the inner pocket of his jacket and cutting his pastry in two. He proffered the knife to Tina.

‘Have you made friends?’ he asked, looking quizzically at the boy. Tina froze, thinking the question was directed at her.

‘Lots,’ Oscar said, ‘but their grannies took them away.’

‘We settled in very well,’ said Tina. ‘We’ve just come from the mall. There’s an amazing display in the toy shop.’

‘It’s closed,’ said Oscar, sliding away to the fish tank.

‘We had no idea things would turn bad,’ Stanley said, once Oscar had left.

‘Me neither.’ Tina flushed, again. ‘I should have stayed put.’

Stanley looked back at the scaffolding as if there was no more to say. Tina laughed apologetically. ‘It’s ironic; I came here to teach medieval history but I’ve had to catch up on modern!’ She fidgeted with her hair, remembering she’d left her earrings in a deposit box in the residence hall.

‘It’s not so different for us. Lots of history, most of which is true.’ Stanley shifted in his seat. ‘I tell myself every day that this is a peaceful, civilised country. It’s a necessary lie.’

Tina lifted her cup. ‘You know this café is famous? I heard about it in the university. And this is absolutely the best coffee I’ve had since moving here. The best.’

Stanley looked dutifully at his coffee but it did not hold his attention. Tina itched to hold his hands, to share her resolute optimism, not that it amounted to much.

‘You volunteered to work here?’

‘Yes. I am not the most practical of people, but the co-operative asked me to join.’

‘That’s lovely. Are you the manager?’

‘I can only manage to clean tables. They put me on the committee because my brother is on the other side. A rebel commander. They thought it might make the café safe.’

Tina giggled. ‘No way! It’s sort of funny. The blown-up wall.’ His face was expressionless. ‘Oh God, was anyone killed?’

‘No. It was a night time shelling. It’s okay to laugh, I am quite used to the perverse humour of my situation.’ He looked at the floor. ‘There was a motion to remove me from the committee afterwards.’

Tina laughed loudly, causing faces to turn towards them. There were no other couples in the café, but then, couples were a rarity on the streets too; people were either in some kind of military unit, or else alone. The prolonged stares were passing judgement, a pronouncement she imagined in her mother’s voice. ‘Couldn’t you at least have fallen for a man your own age?’ That’s what Mum had said about Oscar’s father. Visiting Professor in Medieval History. Exiting professor when Tina said she was keeping her baby.

This was different.

‘Stanley, are there any cinemas still open? I mean, if a café like this can survive…’

‘No. A few people show films in their cellars, that’s all.’ He asked Tina about her university career and she launched into her doctoral thesis on medieval romance. The screech of chairs being pushed back halted her exposition.

Oscar called out ‘Mummy?’ People were standing up, hurriedly putting away their phones.

‘What is it?’

Stanley stood up also. He announced to everyone, in the detached style of a newsreader, the familiar warning that a bombardment was imminent. He stressed that there was no more than five minutes to get to the shelter in the basement. A woman appeared at the staircase wearing a helmet. Tina was buffeted by Oscar running into her and she fought down his attempt to climb into her arms, dragging him to the queue filing down the stairs.

Two women with rifles stood beside a door in the basement. It must have served as a store room for the mall too, because there were alcoves with crates and racks of clothes under dustcovers. Tina walked past people already sitting, legs out, on the bare concrete. Some were stuffing tissue paper into their ears. She hunkered down, making a space between her knees for Oscar. There was no sign of Stanley. She hugged Oscar and pressed her face against his cheek. He nuzzled back.

The door made a heavy, booming peal as it closed. Tina forced her throat open; she croaked to the warden.

‘There was a man at my table, Stanley. Did he come in?’

‘Stanislav?’

‘Yes, sorry, Stanislav. Shouldn’t we wait for him?’

‘We wait for no one.’

The warden spoke with finality. Some people were looking at Tina with expressions of astonishment. An open door was no protection.

‘Stanislav is where he wants to be. He likes to see the shelling!’ The warden exchanged a smile with the guards at the door.

The first shell sounded like distant thunder. The mantra of her colleagues in the university was: ‘You are safe until you are dead.’ It wasn’t much reassurance, but the morbid humour appealed. Three shells landed split-seconds apart. The ground shook, and Oscar cried out. Tina whispered ‘Good boy’ into his ear, and tried to be calm. With a great effort she stared at the wall opposite, remembering the instructions drilled into her at the university; don’t look at other people’s faces, fear is infectious. The shelter is safe…stay in the shelter. Suddenly, a tremendous noise. The floor moved. Dust floated in the air. Oscar’s voice, or echoes of it, bounced off the ceiling and he wriggled closer. A voice commanded silence. The man on Tina’s right talked quietly to Oscar, repeating, ‘Look at that wall; the wall does not move.’ Oscar said ‘Mummy that was near us.’ She hushed him. No one dared say that aloud, it was bad luck. ‘You are safe until you are dead.’

The next volley was more distant, and when the next was further away again her head sank into Oscar’s hair. She inhaled his essence. The all-clear sounded and Tina gushed thanks to those beside her, to the guards, to everyone within reach, her joyously muddled phrases becoming part of an intoxicating babble that reclaimed the shelter from the spirits of the tomb.

The guards dragged the door open. Fresh air, carrying the bitter whiff of atomised concrete, filled the shelter. The warden detained them until the guards returned to say the building was safe. Tina asked if Stanislav was okay. Everyone is okay, they assured her with a blitheness that undercut any sense of relief. Not for the first time, she longed for the gabby voices of home, the “supposes” and the “would haves” that lightened the burden of truth with well-meaning conditionality.

The staff in the café were wiping down the tables when she reached the mezzanine. None of the patrons had returned and the chairs were in a state of haphazard disorder, save one. Stanley! He had his back to them, and was completely still. Oscar became suddenly heavy, and his hand pulled her back. She moved on anyway, carefully avoiding the debris strewn on the wet floor. She noticed shards of glass, and hesitated. His stillness was frightening. ‘Stanley?’ She called again, louder. In the first week of shelling she’d seen sights she wanted to forget, people flattened, their bloodied faces stiffened at the very instant life was crushed. Images that made the blood pool in her legs. She dug her nails into her palms and edged forward. Stanley moved when she came into his eye line. He pointed to his ears, and mimed deafness. On the table, partly shrouded by napkins, were half a dozen goldfish.

Tina suppressed a laugh. Stanley glowered at her, and looked pointedly back at Oscar. Poor Oscar. His eyes were fixed on a zebra fish that brightened the rubble. She knelt beside him. Stanley joined them and with a solemnity that drew mute agreement from Oscar, proposed gathering all the dead fish to give them a proper burial. Tina promised Oscar that they would dig a grave as soon as they got back to the university. Stanley didn’t have papers for the bus to the blue zone, which made parting less awkward than she feared.

In the evening, as she was putting Oscar to bed, they looked down at the little grave they’d dug earlier.

‘Mum, can we get pretty fish in Dublin?’

‘Of course.’ Tina hoped they were not expensive. She imagined her mother refusing point blank to have an aquarium in the house. Not even a goldfish bowl. Was that fair? The subject had never come up. Oscar did a little jump.

‘Time for bed!’

‘Is Stanley your friend?’ Oscar turned to look at her.

‘Maybe. He is nice isn’t he?’

‘Why didn’t he get on our bus?’

‘It’s only for people who are going home.’

She kissed him goodnight and retreated to the kitchenette to clear the table. Her phone lit up with another message; she’d leave it until the dishes were done and another day crossed off the calendar. When she was finally tucked under the duvet her phone had two missed calls, both during dinner time. She flicked to the text messages.

‘You could’ve been killed!’ That was hers, sent while they were on the bus.

He’d sent a thumbs up emoji, which at the time she thought was irritatingly cryptic. It was only when the bi-lingual signs for the campus appeared that she had realised he might not know how to switch to English.

‘Sorry for delay’ came a couple of hours later. Then: ‘I am foolish enough to think I protect the café, that my brother doesn’t hate me that much.’

‘I don’t want a hero,’ she had replied.

‘Next time will be different,’ he had typed, after a pause. Then followed it with ‘Could I meet you tomorrow?’

‘Too soon.’ She’d muted the phone then, and made dinner for herself and Oscar, and did all the other labours of love that apparently did not count as effort.

‘I have a day pass,’ was his unread message.

‘You’ll need thirty-one,’ she replied.

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KM Walsh is a writer living in Kilkenny, Ireland, who is interested in medieval history, great books, the whole earth, and science fiction. He's been known to leave things out.