Good reverberations. © Kate A Hardy 2023
So, this was a makeover?
Alan squinted across the restaurant's newly painted stark interior; he felt like collapsing to his knees and howling.
The Montebello had been so very perfect - snug, intimate; all red cloths, chianti bottles and candles, and that reassuring, badly executed old mural of mountains and sea. Now it was modern - everything out of an Ikea catalogue, grey, white, beige, plastic, ugly, and the bloody lighting! Yes, you wanted to see your food, but not interrogate it.
"Have you reserved, sir?"
Alan started, surprised to see that the waiter requesting information was dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt emblazoned with a smiley pizza, the old white shirts and bow ties dispensed with.
" . . . Yes. A Table for two - Reed."
"Yep - over here, sir." The youth busied about with paper place mat and new tinny cutlery. "Drink while you're waiting?"
"No - thanks. I'll wait till she arrives."
She . . .
It was some months since he had done this - dared to accept a suggestion from Date 'n Co. The last one had been farcical, frightening, even. She'd looked nice enough - under the dim lights of this pre-relooked restaurant, but when they'd got back to her flat it was evident that she had somehow deducted twenty years from her age on her profile. He wasn't agist at all, but her resemblance to Aunty Vera, a crabby relative who had always imprisoned his ten-year-old self next to her crimplene-clad bosom was just a bit too worrying. Maybe this laboratory-style lighting had its uses after all . . .
Alan's sweaty fingers prized open the plastic clad menu. He wasn't hungry but could have downed two bottles of just about anything to keep the clamouring nerves at bay. Glancing around the room he observed the couples discussing, gazing at each other, laughing, chinking glasses. Why did it seem so easy for other people? Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe they had terrible lives and were just seeking a momentary relief - photographing themselves to plop a few self-congratulatory images on Inster-whatever.
"Alan?"
He looked up and saw a woman hovering at the opposite side of the table, her hands awkwardly clutching a pink shiny bag. Alan got up abruptly, causing the carafe of water to judder. He grabbed at it, preventing the small wave which would have headed in her direction.
"Juliette?"
She nodded. "That's me."
He wondered whether to nip round the table and pull the chair out for her, or would that be taken as some sort of male presumption? Old fashioned, chivalrous, out of touch. He gestured to the chair instead.
"Please, take a seat."
Shit - sounded like a job interview. He could feel the sweat patches increasing, his armpits becoming soupy.
She nodded again, a flush spreading across her plump round cheeks. Alan thought she looked rather like the milk maid in the print that hung on gran's kitchen wall - take away the purple and pink splodgy shirt and gold chains, and yes, she could be an older version of the timeless milk maid who stared benignly as you went to the fridge.
Alan searched for the first phrase. "Did you find somewhere to park?" - duh, obviously, or she wouldn't be here . . .
"I came on the bus - I don't drive."
"Ah - I see." A bus . . ."A long journey?"
Alan let the word bus sit in his mind. All the angst in his mind seeped away for a moment.
"From King's Cross," she continued. "I don't own a car . . . I'd rather take the bus."
Alan wanted to ask an odd question, but his mouth uttered something more normal.
"Would you like a drink?"
Juliette shook her head, blond hair undulating. It was rather lovely hair.
"I'll have a glass with the meal, thanks."
He wondered whether to go for the: what do you do? question as he'd stupidly failed to make a note of what she did do. All those profiles had become confused in his head - hairdresser, secretary, hotel receptionist, teacher, estate agent . . . She was studying her menu now, just glancing at him quickly from time to time over the top of the plastic that glinted under the ridiculous spidery lamp. He should have put on the newer shirt that hadn’t been quite dry. Marlene next door said it suited him - blue to go with his eyes. Eyes that had once sat within wrinkle free skin, eyes that had scanned London cars' number plates for far too long.
"Are you ready to order?"
The t-shirted youth was back, pen poised over a pad.
"Oh - err, yes - or do you want longer," asked Alan of his companion.
She smiled up at the youth and Alan noted the gap between her front teeth. A little shiver of pleasure passed along his spine.
"A carbonara, please. And a glass of white - house white."
They hadn't discussed getting a bottle. Alan felt a bit daft. All that vagueness about what she did, and then the word, bus. He'd been thrown. Anyway, she obviously knew what she wanted - not a bad thing.
He quickly scanned the lines of suggestions, hazarding a guess: "Al'arrabbiata . . . and a green salad."
"Drink, sir?"
" . . . White . . . actually, Juliette - shall we get a large carafe?"
Oh, God, might she think he was trying to suggest something? get her loosened up? ugh, what a phrase; something his vile brother would say.
"Good idea," she said, smiling and handing the menu over to the youth.
She turned her eyes on Alan: "So . . . what do you do?" She laughed a little - a musical sound amongst the louder chatter and four chord rubbish that filled the room. "Sorry, that's such a dull question - but I'd rather be honest . . . must admit I've forgotten."
A little of Alan's nervousness fell away, a smile emerging. "That's really okay - likewise . . . I failed to note what you do."
The waiter appeared and showed off with corkscrew and beaded bottle, removing the cork with a practiced pop. He slanted the bottle towards Alan's glass and poured a little. Alan observed the ritual knowing his knowledge of wine stopped at if you can pour it, you can drink it.
"Great - lovely, thanks."
The waiter poured nodded and placed the bottle in its plastic gift bag filled with ice cubes.
Juliette raised her glass. They clinked and both swallowed much of their respective glasses’ contents. Nerves. Or . . . were either of them desperate drinkers? Alan hoped the former, his last serious relationship ruined by Sara's obsession with vodka, in all its forms and flavours.
"Shall we return to the dull subject?"
Alan started, jolted away from a memory of Sara screeching with laughter while balanced on a bin trying to draw a moustache on Boris Johnson's face leering across a Brexit poster."
"Sorry - miles away."
"Where?"
The wine was beginning to seep into his hungry stomach. The waiter had forgotten the bread sticks. Sod it. He would just go for it. Say what he had been thinking. What's the worst that could happen? He described the dim night, the monster felt pen and Sara snapping a heel as she jumped down from the bin.
Juliette grinned. "She sounds like a laugh . . . what happened?"
"Booze . . . and she wasn't into . . ."
"Into?"
"Something . . ."
Shit. The question had arrived, and they hadn't even got to the bloody tiramisu bit yet. Juliette cocked her head engagingly. She really was very pretty, in that innocent milk maid way - mind, who was to say milk maids were innocent . . . all those haystacks, and belts and braces farm hands.
Juliette's hand touched his hand. "Go on - you can say. In fact, maybe we should forget, what do you do and skip to, what would you like to do."
Alan downed the rest of his glass and sat up straighter. "Right . . . I'm a traffic warden, and don't want to be."
She also downed her wine and refilled the glasses. "And?"
The waiter was back. "The carbonara for . . ."
"Me, thanks."
Juliette regarded the plate and made yum noises. Alan thought sadly that he really rather liked her. It would be crap that she would no doubt stare at him with mouth slightly open . . . you like what?
Of course, it hadn't just been the vodka problem with him and Sara - she'd gone along with his idea but never really understood him. He looked down at his tomatoey choice and stuck a fork in.
"And?" repeated Juliette, her own fork laden with creamy pasta. "You were about to tell me . . ."
"Oh. Yes. Okay. But promise you won’t just leave."
"Sure - it can't be that weird, can it?"
Her brow was knitting slightly under the blonde fringe. Perhaps she was thinking about really dark stuff. Mortuary raids. Inappropriate behaviour with goats . . .
"No - no. Not really, just a bit . . . Oh, Hell. Look I like buses, okay? Not just any buses . . . London Route masters, to be specific."
Juliette giggled a little, a thread of pasta clinging to her lip. She popped it back in with a pointed pink nail.
"You'll never, ever, ever believe what I'm about to say."
"I won't?"
"No."
"So. I'm a carpet saleswoman, and don't want to be."
Alan swallowed a peppery mouthful. . . "And?
"I've always had this thing about buses - especially the older ones." She looked a little dreamy for a moment. "Something about that deep reverberation as they wait at stops. The Route Masters were the best - deep, deep reverberation, and the smell of . . ."
"Warm dust," ejaculated Alan. "And those fuzzy velvet seats. And the metal ticket machines."
"And sitting on the top deck with your feet on the bar."
"And the rain streaking sideways down the windows."
"Traffic lights blurring red and green."
Alan's pulse seemed to be in hyper mode. "Did you ever have any . . . sort of . . ."
"Fantasies?" She whispered.
"Yes - that - those."
" . . . I did - do, in fact. Although since the Route master has been taken off the roads, it might be more difficult."
Alan downed another half measure and peered at her through his misty glasses. "Do they involve . . . sex - on a bus."
"Yes." Her answer was hoarsely whispered as if she was already engaging in the act.
Alan slapped his red and green napkin forcefully on the table.
"Would the bus have to be moving?"
"No - stationary would be fine, but better if the engine was going."
Alan feverishly wondered if Jon might be up for a big wad of cash on a Friday evening. His words clattered forth.
"Got this friend . . . she, I mean, he, bought a Route Master on ebay. Cost a fortune. It's not far from here - just off the Holloway Road."
"Does it run?"
"It does."
Alan crossed his cutlery carefully across the large white dish, his trembling fingers causing the metal to rattle. "Did you want a desert?"
Juliette smiled, a red flush appearing on each cheek. "Maybe an Irish coffee - after we've visited the bus. If it's possible."
"Just excuse me for a second."
Alan scooted to the men's, prodded Jon's number into his phone and waited, his, for-the-evening blue shoes jiggling on the tiles, words to himself jangling in the sterile room.
"Please, please, don't be at the flics."
Jon answered sleepily: "Yeah?"
Alan described the situation. "What d'you reckon?"
Jon snorted into his phone: "Fuckin mad, you are. But, why not - hundred and fifty in cash. Do yer?"
"Yes. Great! Marvelous. Be at yours in fifteen minutes."
The defeatist section of Alan's brain suggested Juliette would have left, secretly appalled by his weirdness, but she was there, nibbling on a breadstick, a pink shoe tapping out some internal rhythm.
He laid a gentle hand on her back. "Fancy a stroll to a certain bus owner I know?"
She glanced up at him with a cheeky smile: "Next stop, Holloway Road."
