By Paul Mirabile
Out on my usual morning walk. A lovely June morning, the air fresh, cool, the rising sun obscured by a belt of sleepy, moving cloudlets. The sun’s soft, mellow rays dried the dew on the large, leafy trees and blossoming flowers of Holland Park.
As always, I bent my steps towards my favourite bench where, I could sit alone and quiet, near to the ponds, yet far enough not to hear too many voices. The air smelt fragrant that particular morning. I hastened to start on my adventures with Dickens’ David Copperfield as I turned a sharp bend on the path that took me to the bench and the great, sprawling oak tree that homed the myriad rooks and scurrying squirrels. I halted. A seedy-looking man was slowly sitting up on my bench! I had never found someone occupying my bench before. He was scratching an unshaven face and an uncombed head of black, curly hair.
Snapping out of my astonishment, I boldly went up to him. “Sir, have you been sleeping on this bench?”
Hardly looking at me, he softly replied, “In fact I have, my good man. And I will add, I enjoyed a very quiet and relaxed sleep. Not a soul in the park at two in the morning, not even the squeaking of a squirrel.” He said all this with considerable aplomb.
“Well, I’m very happy to hear that. Of course you shall be leaving soon?”
“Not that soon, I’m afraid. When I sleep out, which is almost always, I arrive here in Holland Park at 2pm. and leave at three in the afternoon, sometimes a bit later.”
I bit my lip. “What do you, eye little girls with bad intent?”
“I should think not — that is very uncouth.”
“ Spit out pieces of your broken luck?”
“Hardly. My luck has remained intact, I’m proud to say.”
“Warm your feet in the sun?”
“They keep very warm in this season, even with my shoes off.”
The bench-sleeper took out a cigarette from a torn shirt pocket, lit it, then smeared his shabby clothes with greasy fingers. “Want a smoke?”
“No thank you, I don’t smoke.”
“May I ask you why you have chosen this particular bench to sleep on?” I resumed, as he puffed away, staring blankly into space. “This is my reading bench, sir. It has been for over two years. I come almost every morning to have a good read before breakfasting at the Duck or Grouse across the road.”
“Ah ! The Duck or Grouse, I know it well. The barmaid is an acquaintance of my wife.”
“You have a wife?”
“Yes, and two children. Does that shock you?” Before I could answer he pointed a slender finger at my book: “A rather dreary read in the morning, no? I mean, why not something more droll like David Lodge or Oscar Wilde?”
“I prefer Dickens if you don’t mind,” I responded, taken aback by the man’s impertinence. The impertinent man yawned, took a bright, red apple from his trouser pocket and began munching on it.
“Sorry to have disrupted your morning reading, old chap, but oftentimes in life we are confronted by unforeseen events or encounters contrary to our habits. The question is: Should we disregard the event or investigate the meaning behind it? Why on this particular morning, on this particular bench have you been confronted by someone who has hindered your daily morning ritual? Is it accidental or providential? Please, sit down.” I did unthinkingly sit down and watched him blow blue smoke rings into the still air. I will admit that I was a bit awed by him.
He went on calmly: “Does my appearance really offend you, cause you any discomfiture? Retard your reading of Dickens, who I must say, I have never really taken a liking to?”
“Oh, so now you insult my choice of reading?” I fumed.
“I meant no insult, sir, only a reminder you that there are morning readings, afternoon readings, evening and night readings. And I’m sorry to inform you that Dickens is not a morning reading, especially David Copperfield.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but if you are to remain seated on this, my bench, then you will be subjected to my perusal of David Copperfield; and whether it pleases you or not will not change my habit of doing so.” My bold affirmation seemed not to disturb the blighter’s rings of smoke that sailed lightly up into the broad leaves of the oak tree.
He wrinkled his nose: “Habits are terrible enemies.”
“Are they?”
“Yes, that’s why I oftentimes change a bench … even a park: St James is lovely with its lake. Richmond, Finsbury and Circus Gardens are very pleasant, too … You see, I despise habits, they instil an implacable rigor mortis.”
I ignored him and frowned: “So, you believe I’m a silly, old dolt because I read David Copperfield every morning on the same bench?”
“Of course not,” he responded quickly, tying the laces of his heelless shoes. “I simply wished to make clear to you on this lovely morning that a stranger has sat on ‘your’ bench, and that you have yet to ask him whether he is a beggar or not!”
The bench-sleeper’s remark put so point blank did indeed pique my curiosity, so I took up his defiance: “Are you not a beggar then?”
“Have I asked for money?” was his snappy reply.
“No … not yet, anyway.”
“Nor will I. So what are your deductions?” He peered at me with a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“That you are not begging for money and that you have given me the occasion to snap my habit by engaging in conversation with you.”
“You have expressed it wonderfully!” he exclaimed.
“In that case, why do you sleep out on park benches, when you said that you have a wife and children, and you have no need of money?”
He shook the dew out of his hair. “Is there anything ambiguous or incongruous about that?” he countered.
“I think there is! I have a wife and a home, and at night I sleep in my home, not on park benches.”
“And children?”
I sat back. “No, in fact we have no children.”
He took out another cigarette. “ So?”
“So what?”
“Oh, nothing. My children often visit me in the parks when not at school, and my wife, when she’s not working.”
“I can’t believe all this!” I stuttered.
“Why not ? Have you something against a gesture so innocent, so insignificant than a man who sleeps on park benches, who is visited by his dear family, when, in fact, he could sleep in a lovely, soft bed next to his charming wife? Let us say that park benches have become my second residence.”
I gasped at that last remark mentioned so candidly. I changed the subject: “Tell me then, what do you do until two or three o’clock on this bench? You have no book to read.”
He chuckled. “My book lies outside written pages. My readings are people whom I observe, the flowers that I smell, the singing birds or gambolling squirrels that I hear. The conversations I have with many a good person, like yourself. I do read books — just the other day I found a copy of Lawrence’s The Rainbow in the trash bin. Can you imagine someone throwing away a classic of that sort?”
“Yes, that is a crime. So your days seem to pass by splendidly, a full agenda, if I may say so without irony.”
“You may say exactly that, my good man.” He stretched his limbs, took another cigarette and smoked dreamily, peering into the thick leafy foliage of the oak tree. Songbirds had been accompanying his well-stated sentences for some time now; they seemed to punctuate them, rhythmically. The manner in which he smoked his cigarette mystified me. There was a touch of delicacy, elegance, even refinement in his gestures. His speech, too, prompted me to think that he was no ordinary tramp.
He pointed to the sun: “When did you say you breakfast at the Duck or Grouse?”
“At ten o’clock.”
“Judging by the sun, it must be very close to ten.”
I glanced at my watch. “How right you are!” I said, stunned by the accurate time-telling of this unusual man.
“I’m afraid I have prevented you from reading one sentence of Dickens.”
“No bother ; I have many mornings to do so … unless …”
“Unless you find me lying or seated here every day ? Not to worry; as I said, I change benches and parks quite regularly. But who knows, we may meet again in different circumstances.” And he smiled while his eyes shone a roguishness that confounded me.
“Right!” I returned. “Perhaps we shall meet again.” I stood up to leave.
“Bon appetit,” he called out as I wended my way to the front gate.
Finishing my breakfast, I hurried home eager to share that odd encounter with my wife, at that moment busy with her morning gardening. “You’ll never know how I spent my morning, dear.”
“Reading your book, I suppose, as you always do,” my wife replied tritely without looking up, pulling out the weeds from the borders of coneflowers, forget-me-nots, asters and chrysanthemums below the bay window of our newly bought duplex.
“Not at all,” I responded. “I had a very strange conversation with a man who sleeps on park benches every night, and sits on them until three in the afternoon.”
She stood and eyed me strangely. “Talking to beggars, hey? How much did he wrest from you?”
“He wasn’t a beggar Helen. He simply sleeps and sits on park benches. In fact, he had a refined way of smoking his cigarette. Very well-spoken, too.”
She continued to stare at me without a word. “He even has a wife and children who visit him in the parks.”
“Does he ? Well I’ll be damned if he wasn’t putting you on, Marvin. Do you think I’d visit you in a park, sleeping on a bloody bench?” I smiled weakly. “He’s a smooth talker, that one is. Be careful, he might put ideas in your head, ”she concluded and attended to her peonies and snapdragons.
I felt odd and asked, “How about a restaurant tonight, dear? I’ve had a handsome pay rise, you know. Let’s dine at the Galvin La Chapelle.”
Helen jumped up like a Jack-out- of-the-Box. “Are you mad? I think that beggar or bench-sleeper got the better of you. The Galvin La Chapelle is the most expensive restaurant in London … eighty or ninety quid a menu!”
“Yes, I know. But I really feel like having a wonderful meal. After all, it’s only money…”
My wife went back to her edging and weeding.
So that night, dressed in our best clothes, we stepped under the chapelled vaults of the Galvin La Chapelle in Spitalfields, whose French cuisine and romantic atmosphere knew no rival in London, perhaps even in the whole of England. We were seated at our reserved table for two in the middle of the enormous dining hall, where we could admire the polished marble pillars supporting the stone ceiling, the timbered vaults and the arched windows. We both felt so paltry surrounded by such grandiose mediaeval decor.
“Such a posh restaurant, I’ve never seen such lovely architecture and decoration. And feel this tablecloth, it wasn’t bought at Primark,” Helen remarked blissfully, passing her rough, garden-versed fingers over the silken cloth after having been seated in a red-upholstered chair by a charming young waiter.
“I knew you’d like it, darling.” I beamed, thoroughly delighted at my wife’s first impressions. “You deserve it, haven’t we’ve worked hard: first the duplex then the car?” The Maître d’Hôtel[1] greeted them in French, then with much studied decorum, lay two menus on the table in the middle of which had been placed a vase of intoxicating tuberoses whose fragrance almost caused Helen to faint in ecstasy. Marvin ordered cocktails.
Suddenly his face turned white as a ghost. Helen, snapping out of her ecstatic state, searched the sudden whiteness for a reason: “Marvin … Marvin, are you alright ? Is it the flowers or the prices on the menu that have turned your face into stone ? I told you this place was dear. We’re not at MacDonald’s, you know …”
Marvin struggled to speak: “No … no … it’s not the menu, dear.” He turned to observe the Maître d’Hôtel presently leaning on the counter of the cocktail bar. He was attired in the most striking satin canvas double-breasted tuxedo with a black, silk bow tie whose tips brushed lightly against the red-laced lining of his vest. His tailored trousers grazed daintily a pair of Crockette and Jones shoes, the dearest in London. There he leaned on his right elbow, chatting up the barmaid. With the most refined gesture, he took out a cigarette from a gold-plaited case and lit it.
Marvin gasped: “It’s him! It’s him, Helen!”
“What are you on about?”
“The head-waiter talking to the waitress at the bar…It’s the bench-sleeper in the park. I’m sure of it.”
Helen sat back, a bit ruffled at her husband’s outlandish outbursts. The young waiter brought the hors d’oeuvres[2]: duck liver royal and buffalo milk panna cotta. As soon as the waiter had served them: “Are you daft!” she whispered so as not to be heard by two couples who had just been seated near to them. “Stop this nonsense, Marvin. Control yourself. Don’t forget where we are. How can a tramp on a park bench be the head waiter of the most expensive restaurant in London?”
“But the way he smokes his cigarette…it’s exactly like the beggar’s! And his grey eyes, those glazed, blurry, grey eyes are his. Helen I can’t believe it!”
“Then don’t believe it because it can’t be him. Calm down and eat your duck liver. Look, he’s coming to take down our main dish, which because of your foolishness, we haven’t chosen yet.”
The stately Maître d’Hôtel glided over, pad in hand. Marvin, red as a lobster, buried his face in the menu. Helen scanned hers, marvelling at the names.
“Let me suggest the crab ravioli,” His soft voice sailed in between them. A voice very familiar to Marvin.
“That sounds lovely,” Helen said, staring impatiently at her husband who was hiding his face behind the menu. “With a lot of ricotta cheese, please. I’ll also order a free range aged duck sauce à l’orange. And you darling, what will it be?” she added, barely disguising her anger.
“I shall have the Iberico pork with chimichurri sauce, please,” Marvin ordered, peering over his menu at the head waiter.
“Of course, sir, we serve the finest French cuisine in England ; une cuisine exquisite!”
“How about some wine, dear?” Helen interrupted, peevishly.
The Maître d’Hôtel suggested: “An Aloxe-Corton Latour red wine goes well with pork. As to the crab, why not a carafe of Chardonnay?” Helen and Marvin acquiesced by simply nodding their heads. “If I’m not mistaken, this is your first time here? Perfect. Then permit me to offer you, on the house, our burnt honey custard tart for dessert. It simply melts in your mouth.” The first-comers wreathed in smiles, albeit Marvin’s somewhat withered, nodded again in ostentatious gratitude. The Mâitre d’Hôtel glided off across the stone-paved floor with velvet steps.
Marvin leaned over the table, his nose ruffling the tuberoses. “Helen, I’m telling you it’s him. I’m going over there to settle this mystery once and for all. I know he recognised me, that’s why he offered that dessert to us.”
“Don’t be rude, Marvin. I shan’t be embarrassed because of your ill-behaviour. That beggar has got to your head. Sip your cocktail, why are you ruining such a lovely evening, especially one that will cost you over two hundred quid?” Helen bit her lip.
“But dear, I shan’t embarrass you ; I’ll just casually stroll over to the fellow and hint at David Copperfield. He’ll get the message. He’ll know I’m on to him.”
“What do you mean ‘on to him’ ? He’s not a criminal! Stop this immediately or I’ll leave you eating your two-hundred pound meal alone!” With those stern words that brooked no rebuke, the affair appeared settled …
Marvin, however, was not to be foiled …
He stood up. Gathering courage, he made a bee-line for the cocktail bar where the Maître d’Hôtel was serving himself a drink. Marvin in a low but firm voice said: “Sir, I believe we have met elsewhere.”
Being much taller than Marvin, the Maître d’Hôtel bent over him, drawing closer. He placed a comradely hand on his shoulder : “My good man, how observant you are! My disguise has not fooled you for a moment. But please, look at your lovely wife,” and he sighed. “She’s almost in tears, worrying over your stubbornness to know the truth. The truth? Of what? About a sleeper on a park bench, one who harbours a certain disdain for Dickens in the mornings? If I were to reveal the mystery of our morning’s encounter, would you please return to your table and enjoy the meal with your wife.”
Marvin remained speechless, although he did scoop out a handful of cashew nuts from a porcelain dish on the cocktail bar counter.
“You see,” the head waiter continued philosophically, “here in this restaurant I play the role of a Maître d’Hôtel. I wear the weeds and mask of social bearing, parade about this remarkable dining room with aristocratic ease. I follow the rigid rules of proper etiquette. Where we met and spoke this morning is my breath of fresh air, my dwelling of unconfined freedom. There I dispose my mask, divest my constraining costume and don the clothes and air of a bird that has flown out of its cage. Here inside, I’m an actor. There, outside, a spectator no longer on stage constrained to act, but react to those whom I observe. And that my good man is the essence of freedom. In the parks, I regain a sense of reality by observing the simplicity of Nature, the grass beneath my feet, the sun, moon and stars above my head. The trees and the songbirds. In the restaurant, albeit it be the finest in England, I merely act, opined as a social asset, as a means to cater to people’s needs for costly pleasures, and of course to my own and those of my family’s, although mine and theirs are far from costly. Look, I shouldn’t be smoking this, but it is the only pleasure, the only soupçon of outside freedom that I can afford myself here.”
Marvin, awed by this avowal, said nothing. The Maître d’Hôtel concluded: “Now hurry back to your charming wife who has been impatiently waiting for your return. I do believe your main course will be promptly served. But let me say this, please do not disclose the reason for my bench-sleeping activities. That will be our little secret, one only between us. Look, your wife appears so upset, why subject her to trivialities? Discretion, my good man. Discretion. Put her at ease and enjoy your meal.” The Maître d’Hôtel causually strolled to a nearby table, smiling.
Marvin shuffled to his table, where indeed Helen was fuming. “Well ! Has he called the ambulance to have you packed off to Bedlam?”
Marvin winced. The irony of her remark cut deep into his emotions. He appeared lost in thought: “No … We had a smashing conversation, in fact. He’s quite a decent chap, well-read on Dickens, too.”
“Good, then let us get on with this wonderful meal. Cheers darling, and thank you, the wine is heavenly and the crab, well, what can I say?” Helen raised her glass: “To us … and Dickens!”
[1] Head-Waiter.
[2] ‘Starters’.
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles
Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International
Borderless 