A Street Café Named Desire Read online

  A Street Café Named Desire

  R J Gould

  When David meets Bridget at a school reunion, he unexpectedly finds himself falling for her. With problems at work and a failing marriage, David feels he’s going nowhere, and mysterious, enigmatic Bridget draws him out of his shell. He’s overjoyed when, against all odds, she returns his interest – but what is it in her past that makes her reluctant to reveal her true feelings?

  As their relationship progresses, David starts to think he may realise his dreams – but will he get everything he’s ever wanted, or is it all too good to be true?

  A Street Cafe Named Desire is a humorous yet thought-provoking view of contemporary relationships and the difficulties people face as they take unexpected new paths once the first flush of youth is over.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter One

  He was forty-three. Autumn shouldn’t be such a surprise any more, but the annual explosion of colour never ceased to amaze him.

  Here they were at their twenty-five year school reunion, crowded around the bar area of the upmarket Hotel Marlborough in Henley. Huge sash windows provided a magnificent view of a fast-flowing, grey River Thames. Rowers were flying downstream. Beyond the river was a steep bank with a dramatic display of early autumn trees.

  ‘David. You’re David!’

  Turning, he was clamped in a bear hug by a woman whose strong grip took his breath away. A face with two scarlet lips came hurtling towards him. His desperate attempt to avoid impact failed and their lips collided.

  ‘Well, well. David. Incredible – just incredible.’

  What did this ‘incredible’ mean? That he’d hardly changed? That he’d transformed beyond imagination? She stepped back and her vice-like grip transferred to his shoulders.

  ‘David, David.’

  How long would this continue – wasn’t she going to advance the conversation? He knew he was David. Obviously she did too. Unfortunately he couldn’t assist because his natural response – hello Alice, hello Barbara, Clare, Diane, Elizabeth, Fiona, or whatever – was impossible. He had no idea who she was.

  ‘You do remember me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That field trip!’ She had released her grip, but the physical assault continued with a punch on his upper left arm. It was no more than a prod really, but right on the spot where the flu vaccination had been applied.

  David winced. She noticed.

  ‘You’re much too tough to worry about a little tap like that. Well you certainly were back then,’ she continued, her face contorting into a grotesque smirk. She gave him another slightly harder punch in the same place.

  ‘Helen, darling!’ The boxer turned to acknowledge the greeting as another unrecognisable ex-schoolmate approached. Now he had her name and with that a distant memory of teenage groping with a lithe blonde girl during the fourth form field trip to the French Alps. He noted the dramatic change in size and shape since her school days.

  ‘It’s, let me see now, don’t tell me. It’s … it’s Sharon!’ Helen screamed and the two women jumped up and down before regressing into adolescent reminiscences about their poor behaviour in various lessons at school. If he closed his eyes he could be listening to his own teenage children. But he didn’t close his eyes because a shaft of late afternoon sun had burst through the voluminous clouds and now the trees beyond the bank were ablaze in their full glory.

  A week or so ago the leaves would have been green. Now they were dazzling reds, yellows, oranges, and browns.

  ‘Are you listening, David? You agree with me, don’t you?’ Sharon asked.

  ‘Yes, I do. Absolutely.’ Of course green wasn’t one colour, he reflected. There were shades – light to dark, and variations like sage and jade.

  ‘That’s not true. It wasn’t like that, was it, David?’ It was Helen.

  ‘No it wasn’t. Absolutely not.’

  ‘But a minute ago you said it was,’ Sharon countered.

  ‘It’s all to do with perception,’ David mumbled, eager not to disrupt his train of thought. Without doubt there was a wider range of colours when it came to the reds, oranges, yellows, and browns. Bronze, sienna, ochre, and sand for starters. Chocolate. Copper. Mahogany. Rust.

  ‘Are you with us, David?’ Helen delivered a punch to precisely the same spot. Her accuracy was uncanny.

  ‘He always was a dreamer, drifting off into his own little world,’ Sharon added, her voice high-pitched and piercing. The two women were giggling, making it hard for him to concentrate on colours.

  He was ill at ease because there was a frustrating gap, a missing one on the tip of his tongue. Then it came to him, perhaps the dominant colour out there across the river. ‘Russet,’ he announced.

  ‘David, what on earth are you going on about?’ He turned away from the autumn beauty; both women were frowning at him.

  ‘Rush it, you said. Rush what?’

  David remained silent as Helen continued. ‘We were remembering how Mr Strickland used to take the piss out of you in Geography.’

  ‘Highlight of the week, that was.’ Helen laughed coarsely as Sharon took over, speaking with a deep voice in an attempt to impersonate the teacher.

  ‘And where are we now, David? I hope in the Australian outback with the rest of us.’

  ‘Toss-er’ Helen added in teenage-speak.

  ‘I rather liked him,’ David announced to the gap between the two women. ‘Excuse me ladies, must circulate.’ He turned and headed towards the bar.

  ‘Well, look who we’ve got here.’ The voice of Bill Thatcher hadn’t changed

  ‘It’s our little David,’ another unchanged voice, this was Ben Carpenter.

  An overzealous slap landed on David’s back. ‘You buying the drinks, mate?’ Ben asked.

  David realised he was no longer scared of them. How could you be, looking at the two pot-bellied, balding, greying men with sallow puffy faces? They had lost their menacing edge. Also, he was prepared to admit when he’d had time to reflect, he wasn’t scared because he didn’t much care what happened, not after what he had been subjected to over the past few weeks.

  He eyed Ben. ‘Why don’t you get me one?’

  Ben looked aghast. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll have a bottle of Bud, thank you.’

  ‘Is little David acting tough?’ Bill enquired.

  ‘
I think he is,’ added Ben.

  ‘It’s not a case of acting tough, it’s about growing up. And I seem to have made a better job of it than you two. I suppose keeping fit helps, the judo.’

  ‘You do judo?’ sneered Bill.

  ‘Yes. And not drinking as much beer as you has assisted.’ With that, David gave Bill a generous whack on his pot belly. When he analysed his action afterwards, readily admitting it had been a step too far, he wondered whether the annoying physical maltreatment by Helen might have been part of the reason for his own mild assault. But probably it all came down to his profound unhappiness – he couldn’t care less about the outcome of his actions. Not at that instant at any rate. But he did care a few nanoseconds later when Bill floored him with a right hook to the chin.

  Bill looked down at him with contempt. ‘You gonna try your judo on me, little David?’

  Of course there never had been any judo, only badminton which had kept him in reasonable shape but clearly hadn’t prepared him for fighting. David gazed up at a gathering of his ex-classmates in a circle around him, some with a look of concern, but most smiling. Helen and Sharon were in the smiling group, but at least Helen did have the decency to tell Bill and Ben to lay off as it was a festive occasion. The crowd dispersed and David stood gingerly. He made his way to a chair by the window. In the short interval between boredom and humiliation dusk had enveloped the trees. Now they stood as forlorn grey silhouettes. Despite there no longer being anything of interest to see, he chose to stare out the window rather than look inside the room at the alcohol-fuelled gathering.

  ‘One Bud coming up.’

  He turned. The woman handed over the bottle and sat next to him, a glass of white wine in her other hand. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Just my pride hurt a bit. Well my chin, too.’

  ‘Poor you. Those two were appalling twenty-five years ago and they haven’t improved by the look of things.’

  David recognised the voice, the engaging Scottish lilt from all those years ago.

  ‘I’m Titless,’ the woman added.

  He glanced from her face to her upper body and saw shapely curves. When he looked up she was smiling and he reddened.

  ‘Not anymore, but I was then. I took a while to develop. Too long for Bill and Ben, so that was their nickname for me.’

  ‘I remember you. Bridget.’

  ‘Congratulations. You’re the first to know my name tonight, not that I’ve spoken to many.’

  ‘Well, you’ve changed beyond all recognition.’

  Like every parent, David had told his children the story of the ugly duckling that turned into a beautiful white swan, and while he appreciated the moral symbolism, he had never seen such a transformation in real life until now. Bridget had been an unsociable, awkward girl, liable to blush the instant someone addressed her. She had appeared friendless and was known as ‘Spotty Swot’ amongst his circle of friends. He hadn’t been aware of the ‘Titless’ nickname, not surprising as he kept well away from the gang. Her legs, he remembered, had looked too spindly to support her. He’d felt sorry for Bridget, a rather sad-looking loner, but he’d been too shy to do anything about it.

  The woman by his side was divine – a goddess. Not in a garishly sexy way – just downright beautiful. Every facial feature of textbook perfection. A narrow face with high cheekbones; a little, upturned nose; pouting lips; soft, powder blue eyes. Eyes that were now smiling at him.

  ‘I feel like I’m being inspected. Do you approve?’

  ‘Yes, yes. You look lovely, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘Thank you, I never say no to a compliment. I was wondering though – what on earth made you come along to this awful reunion?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘It’s a long evening.’

  Chapter Two

  Two weeks ago. That’s when David had made the decision to attend the reunion. And that was just two weeks after Jane had told him she was leaving. Not only Jane, but Jim was there too. His best friend Jim.

  It was a sunny Saturday and David was sitting in the garden with a mug of tea, flicking through the Daily Mail. According to the newspaper there was a lot wrong with the world. He had never been able to understand why this was Jane’s newspaper of choice.

  David was addicted to perusing and mocking the content. One article covered a new drama about vampires which was, claimed the journalist, ‘sucking the innocence out of our children with a shocking tale of depravity that has become the norm on television’. His daughter Rachel loved the programme. David couldn’t gauge the extent of her innocence; she was probably the same as most other sixteen-year-olds in keeping her feelings very much to herself, but there was no evidence of anything being sucked out by what she watched.

  On the same page a woman’s life of drink and one-night stands had left her feeling hollow. But then she found the answer: ‘I’m going to become a nun.’ Two photographs showed the before and after. The first, a smiling woman with a rather low cut top holding up a glass of red wine. The second a dour woman, her mane of jet black hair now covered or possibly even discarded, replaced by a nun’s customary headgear. David smiled self-righteously, the writer’s implied preference for the nun at odds with the saucy underwear display ‘to capture your man’ on the previous page.

  What a contrast between the women featured on these pages and sensible, practical, lovable Jane – he was lucky to have such a wonderful wife.

  He read on, reaching the finance articles. The stock market was continuing its downward trend, with the companies he had a few shares in doing particularly badly.

  All in all it had been a satisfying afternoon. He’d pruned the roses, taken the dead heads off the geraniums, and swept up the first wave of fallen leaves. The garden waste had been deposited in the green recycling bin ready for the Monday collection. It was his turn to cook tonight. The lamb was out the freezer and a bottle of Pinot Grigio, Jane’s favourite, was chilling in the fridge.

  His wife was out shopping, a regular Saturday pursuit. She favoured going to Brent Cross over the local precinct despite the distance and the queue of drivers battling to get into one of the substantial, but still inadequate, car parks. Inside the mall there were two vast walkways to trek around, as big as athletics tracks. At least in a race everybody was going the same way, but here a stream of determined shoppers struggled to pass those travelling in the opposite direction. For years David had kept his dislike of these trips to himself and selflessly accompanied Jane on her expeditions. But a while back she must have sensed that David hated the experience and volunteered to go alone. She seemed happy window shopping, for despite being away for hours she rarely came back with a purchase.

  He didn’t hear the front door open and only looked up when she called his name.

  There was an urgency to her tone. ‘David,’ she repeated.

  Smiling, he turned to face her. ‘Hello, Jane. Have you had a good time? Oh, hello there, Jim. How are things with you?’

  Jim stood by her side, his face serious. Then as David glanced down he saw they were holding hands. Instantly his heart was pounding, his skin itching with prickly heat, his mouth dry. He couldn’t speak. His mind raced, searching for an explanation beyond the one that he knew had to be true. As he awaited the awful inevitability of what was to come, the few seconds’ interval stretched on endlessly.

  It was Jane who spoke first, getting straight to the point. ‘Jim and I are in love, David. We’ve been in a relationship for a couple of months and we both know we can’t live apart. We’ve tried to fight it, but it isn’t possible. I’ve decided to move in with him.’

  There was a pause, perhaps inviting a reaction from David, but he remained speechless. Unexpected tears welled up, blurring his vision, and a single tear trickled down his right cheek. He trapped the salty moisture with his tongue.

  Now Jim was speaking in a this-is-the-sensible-way-forward-for-mature-adults manner. David caught phrases like ‘I’m sure we can do this amicably�
��, ‘we hope a divorce can go through as smoothly as possible’, and worst of all, ‘we must remain friends after a healing period’.

  It was Jane’s turn to add some unemotional sound bites. ‘It’s not as if we have shared interests any more’; ‘all the children do is hear us argue’.

  He didn’t think they argued much at all. Admittedly they didn’t chat or laugh as they used to, but there was no conflict, not in his opinion anyway. The reference to the children took him out of his numb state. How on earth were they going to cope with this? Was Jane intending to take them with her, to live with the person they knew as Uncle Jim, or were they to remain with him? Did lawyers settle that?

  ‘What about the kids?’ he blurted out.

  Lawyers would not be needed in this case since Jane had already made the decision. ‘I think the children should stay here. After all, this is their family home. I’ve written a letter for you to give them and I’ll be back tomorrow morning to chat once they know what’s what.’

  Now there was anger to mix with his self-pity. ‘So it’s my job to tell them? “Rachel, Sam. Come here a minute. Just to let you know mum has left, she’s gone to live with Jim.” All right with that?’

  ‘There’s no need for sarcasm, David. I can’t face them today, it’s too difficult for me,’ Jane said in an actually-I-feel-tough-enough-to-face-anything voice.

  ‘Surely you understand how poor Jane feels, David,’ Jim added. ‘Show some compassion, for God’s sake.’

  Jane took over. ‘I think we should go now, but as I said, I’ll see them tomorrow.’

  She turned to leave. Jim remained facing him. ‘You take care of yourself now, David.’ He extended his arm for a handshake which sent David into such a state of shock that he sat down, his mouth agape.

  And with that Jim turned and followed Jane out through the kitchen, towards the front door.

  David was still in shock, sitting on the white plastic chair with the mildew-covered orange and brown striped cushion when Sam came home. He couldn’t have missed Jane by more than a couple of minutes. With great excitement Sam began to recount how he’d been testing out his friend Adrian’s new radio controlled car in the local park. While David fretted about what to say, Sam talked about the speed of the Lamborghini model, how it was something he’d love to own so that he could race against his friend.