Evy and Crab by Lisa Ratcliffe

(From my Covent Garden Short Story Collection written for my MA Writing)

Evy and Crab

At first you can hardly believe it’s still there, nestled amongst the ever-changing façades of James Street. The window draws you near with Victorian sweetness. Behind the gold lettered glass, jars adorned with lace necklets sit seductively alongside over-laden baskets. Lavender pomanders rest easy on white linen, and through the spaces you can just make out a stand of ‘home made’ cards wishing Love, Luck and Happiness. Dreams in pretty packages, potions and cure-alls, luxuries you know you cannot afford. You turn away uneasily; navigate the sea of bobbing heads, of carnival colours and backpacks, the cobbles beneath your feet obscured.
        Moving down the length of James Street you smile at the row of moving statues; cracked painted sleeves, a wink or a nod followed by surprised squeals from passers by; The Rock Garden Café.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, clad in sweat, my heart pounding. I dream that I am walking down a country lane. It is summer and everywhere is a montage of colour and noise and I am feeling relaxed and happy, as though the possibilities are endless…


Turning back towards the Opera House you are accosted by development. Gone are the shadowed steps, the pillars and portico. Gone too the walled garden, the mural, the shrubs. You close your eyes, allowing memories to flutter gently through your mind like autumn leaves; images of chillums and change bags; the teasing sounds of siku; the soft caress of Indian silk trousers on tanned, dusty flesh. When you squeeze your eyes together tight enough, you think you can hear a washboard and a tea-chest bass, resonating, rumbling beneath the raw New Orleans vocals, but it is only the bass line of the city as traffic filters through from The Strand. No more skiffle, no more Gutter Brothers on Sunday afternoons. The old days, of weaving through laidback tourists with a hat in your hand and the sun on your face, have been replaced with trips to the park, to the zoo, to the supermarket.

Everyone remembers their first time. For me it was a Sunday afternoon back in May 1987. I emerged from the darkness of the spiral staircase, into the light of the ticket hall, as excited as a child on a Ferris wheel. It must have taken me an hour to walk the length of James Street, stopping every few feet to gape at the next marvel. I remember I stopped beside the antiques market and called my mother. Oh I’m fine, I had said, failing to add that I did not think I would be coming home again.


The supermarket. You wonder how your husband’s coping as you walk towards the Transport Museum, but someone is strumming vaguely familiar songs across the way on the piazza to a small gathering, drifting in and out of focus, the sound of a coin striking another in the guitar case laid out in front of the Transport Museum. He will cope, you are sure, if only because you are not there.
       The heat is palpable now, the air thick. The old lines are in full flow from new mouths on the indoor piazza, whilst outside, fire clubs are hurled from twelve foot unicycles to whooping cheers from the balcony of the Punch & Judy; echoes of younger days, of other worlds. Sound after sound mingle into one, the air flooded; a baby’s cry, a police siren, hellos and goodbyes; another wave of languages you cannot place. You move through the central buildings, wondering what to do, feeling displaced by time.
       Suddenly, through the constant hub and hum of life comes a solitary note, piercing the air like a needle, and you move towards it as though on a wire, running your hand along the red painted iron work of the railings, gazing down into the sunken terraces which were once a part of the old catacombs.

You swear to God, and you’re not even religious, this girl can sing. Carmen in ripped jeans and a faded t-shirt. You lean over the rail, arrested by every note. Punters sit captivated below, sun kissed, sipping white wine, smoking Gauloise Blondes, recharging feet worn down on Oxford Street, rising and falling with every aching note, and then to earth; the spell broken by a round of applause, the hum of background noise returning like radiation, hovering in the air, descending. She gulps water from a plastic bottle and wipes her brow in one exhausted movement before taking her hat and presenting it, upturned, to crowd and rapturous applause.
       ‘Evy?’ A voice takes you by surprise. You turn on a farthing. The sun beats down through the glass ceiling.
       ‘I…’
       ‘I thought it was you,’ he goes on. ‘What a surprise.’
       A pause. Generous laughter. And now you are looking at your feet; at passers by; at the boy with the girl in the too short flowery dress; at his scuffed shoes; inside yourself.
       ‘Say something...’
       You look up into his dark eyes for as long as you can bear, before lowering your gaze; refocusing on his burgundy neckerchief. ‘I didn’t think you’d… ’
       ‘Still be here? Where else would I be?’
       ‘How are you?’ Is this the best you can do? The heat is rising now, rising from the pit of your stomach, up through your centre, painting your cheeks.
       ‘Can’t you tell?’ He pirouettes, a flourish of the hand over fresh tails; ivory lace shirt cuffs; a tip of his black silk hat for his finale. And then he is still again, his face serious. ‘You look well.’ He hesitates, ‘Better than well. You haven’t changed at all.’ This last line is a lie.
       The heat. It overwhelms. Your mouth is dry, and just as you are thinking, I never should have come, the ground lurches nastily to the left. You reach out to touch the world, checking it is still there, and find only his hand. The market begins to turn in slow, ever decreasing circles, and you fall down, down, down, caught by the spiralling stone steps that reach up towards the surface to where there is light.

       ‘You gave us quite a scare,’ says a woman you have never seen before. She takes your other arm. ‘Is she with you?’
       He nods.
       You are watching the transaction from a distance, in black and white, frame by frame, feeling you have missed the most important point but unsure where to look. Hoisted onto unsteady legs, a pain shoots through your ankle, and this, this is what you are thinking: Fuck. Only you can barely stand, let alone run, and besides, where is there to run to?
       You allow yourself to be led through the teeming walkway to Ponti’s outdoor café terrace, pressed by those bear like arms into his shoulder. No time to think, you find yourself seated and served; hot sweet Earl Grey, a slice of lemon on the side, a teaspoon of déjà vu.
       ‘How are you feeling? Better?’
You worry the sweet smelling tea with the tip of your spoon, the throbbing in your ankle already beginning to fade.
       ‘I’m fine, really.’
       In the café, he takes out a silver cigarette case, removes a slender stick and taps it, filter down, on the table three times, habits etched.
       ‘It’s nice to see you,’ you say, following the script. The weather is next, then the show. You sip your tea, avoid prolonged eye contact, and reprimand yourself for every stolen glimpse.

When I first met Crabtree, I was sitting on the low wall of the raised beds in the garden. It ran along the length of the mural that once brightened the corner of Russell Street. Tapping along to the beat of a tea-chest bass I was lost in the music when he appeared out of nowhere, an upturned hat in his hand.
       “Would you like to give something?” he said, and I must have looked confused because he added, “For the show.”
       “I haven’t got any—”
       “Change! I have plenty of change.” He was grinning now, the hat spinning on the tip of his practiced finger like a carnival plate on a stick.
       “Hang on…” I said, guiltily digging in my bag, but he was gone, consumed by the crowd. I remember I watched him with increasing fascination; a black silk topper held aloft on slender fingers; a flourish of coat tails; a glimpse of long black curls. Later, as the band packed up and the crowd dispersed, he appeared behind me.
       “Pick a card, any card,” he said, and then, as I made a tentative choice, he grinned. “Now hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”

       ‘So how has life been treating you?’ he asks.
       ‘Okay. How is your show doing?’
       ‘I have a new bottler,’ he says. ‘The last one set her own show up. She was good too.’
       ‘Was she as…’ You swallow your words with the dregs of cold tea and he does not pursue them.
       ‘So,’ he says, ‘here we are again.’
       ‘Yes.’ After the pleasantries are over there is nowhere to go.
       ‘Why did you leave?’ hangs on the end of his tongue; an awkward silence cutting through the laughter that swells and rises on the indoor piazza. He orders two coffees, and you watch a brightly coloured club spinning up into the air, watching its inevitable descent and feeling yourself curling inwards, wrapped up like a fist. You are thinking of home, wondering how you could have allowed this to happen.

He was unlike anyone I had ever met. He made me hungry for things I could not name, and so different was he, that I had to have him, to cage him. In the restaurant on that first night, so dark I could barely see his face, he leaned across the table and pulled the card I had chosen from behind my ear. How I laughed, begged to know the trick of it. In his hands a deck of cards took on a life of their own as delicate fans formed and folded, disappeared into thin air. And even after I discovered his secrets, held them in my hand, even then, I watched him as a child watches a parent.

       ‘Evelyn.’
       ‘Yes?’
       ‘Why did you come back?’
       ‘I had some free time…. I wanted to see…’
       ‘See what, Evy?’ See him? Hear that voice again? Pick another card?
       You are shrugging your shoulders, shaking your head whilst he sits as a measure of stillness.
       ‘I’m married now,’ you say, the diamond on your left hand cutting at the soft underbelly of your finger. ‘I have three…’ Your smile wanes. He is rolling a coin across his knuckles, divining the past in the froth of his coffee.
       ‘Yes, I had noticed.’ These are not the things he wants to hear.
       You smile apologetically, unsure as to what you are sorry for. ‘What about you?’
       ‘Still in Camden,’ he says.
       ‘Still squatting then?’ There is relief in your voice as you feel, perhaps it was the right choice, but it is short lived.
       ‘I bought a house,’ he says. ‘Buskers are allowed mortgages too, you know.’
       And now you are sitting back looking at yourself and wondering what you are doing still sitting here, so close to the fire. You gulp your coffee, look for an exit.

The evening light casts a cloud over the glass roof of the indoor piazza. You are watching him. He is watching you. He smiles, but it is only a mouth smile. There is a reckoning to be done here and it is as inescapable as your next breath and the breath after that.
       ‘I didn’t come here to—’
       ‘To what? To walk around the market? Watch a show?’ His anger rises in small spirals. ‘What exactly did you come back for?’
       ‘Not to see you.’ Your words hang, suspended; a rush of applause from the piazza.
       ‘But you have seen me, so what now?’
       ‘I didn’t want it to…’ You reach for your bag as you rise up out of your seat. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

He proposed once, you know. In Trafalgar Square it was, sitting on the fountain wall, watching the black cabs drifting in and out of the Night Buses. I remember he took my hands in his, enveloped them.
       ‘I love you,’ he whispered, but even so I knew I could not pin him down. I accepted, of course. I vowed to follow him faithfully from one venue to the next, to stand outside Market Garden Security at five in the morning to book the best shows. He was my bird of paradise and I would train him to eat from the palm of my hand. I wore his coke can ring as though it were best quality platinum for at least a month before it slipped from my finger and was consigned to my little shoe-box of memories forever.

You consider your options as you enter the main building. Past the counter, down the stairs, one step at a time. The lights, low and soothing, and the smell of aromatic cinnamon teas unearth memories of mulled wine and rickety tables; bricked cellar walls and laughter. You catch a glimpse of yourself seated in the alcove, hands reaching across the table, a candle gently flickering.
       Behind the closed door of the ladies’ your aging face quizzes you in the mirror. The basin pedestal half conceals a cracked red tile. You re-touch your makeup, smooth down your hair. You take out your mobile phone and wait a few minutes before switching it off. As the door closes behind you with a gentle click, you move up the stairs once more, turning the corner into a flood of light; sunlit windows making everything glow golden; catching on shiny brass taps, glinting on row upon row of polished silver canisters filled with a gathering of exotic, fragrant unquantifiable substances. And oh, how the mind wanders when confronted with such trinkets for the eye. He catches you bewildered and unaware, peering in through the shop front. You wave without thinking. A storm in a Latte. The beating of a butterfly wing.

       ‘You were gone ages,’ he says as you take your seat.
       ‘I…’
       ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Walk with me.’
       ‘But—’
       ‘It’s too crowded here. I won’t even talk if you don’t want me to.’

His flesh is warm and dry as fingers curl around fingers. A girl again. Almost. Together you trace the cobbled steps of yesteryear, following the narrow byway which leads to the church gardens.
       ‘I remember this place,’ you say, ‘A little green haven in the middle of a dusty city.’
       He grins like a schoolboy, leaps onto, then over the bench, coat tails fanning out behind him like a peacock. ‘Come on. There’s something I want you to see.’
       You follow him, body acting ahead of your thoughts. Into the shade of the old building you go, and all you can hear is the sound of your feet on the cast iron steps and the rushing of blood in your ears.

On the fourth and final balcony he stops and waits for you, hands on the rail, surveying the gardens below.
       ‘I love it up here,’ he says.
       ‘It’s beautiful…’ and it is, sitting atop a fire escape in the middle of London with a man in a black top hat and coat tails.
He sits down and takes something from one of his many concealed pockets. You are watching in silence. This is what you are thinking; Leave. Before it is too late. But you recognise the small wooden box with disbelief.
       ‘You kept it?’
       ‘Never found one better,’ he says, his voice so soft it is barely a whisper.
You ought to say, ‘Don’t do that,’ but your words are lost along with all resolve, and you find yourself slipping back into the rhythm of his breathing.
       ‘I wanted to be normal,’ you say, by way of absolution. ‘I needed that.’
       ‘You were normal,’ he says. ‘What you wanted was security, and that, my love, is one of life’s better illusions.’ He deftly rolls the papers between his fingers, licks the edges, creates a seal.
       ‘I wanted children, a family. Was that so awful?’ You watch as the pungent smoke emerges from his lips in a perfect ‘O’.
       ‘Are you happy, Evelyn?’
       ‘I think so,’ you say, but sometimes there are no answers, no matter how simple it seems.

You reach for his hand, the present forgotten; encapsulated in the past. You can feel the heat of the smoke as you inhale the hashish deep into your lungs; hold it for as long as you can bear.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, clad in sweat, my heart pounding. I dream that I am walking down a country lane. It is summer and everywhere is a montage of colour and noise and I am feeling relaxed and happy, as though the possibilities are endless. But as I walk the sky draws over me, dark and forceful. I look behind me to see the way back is overgrown with shoulder high bracken, my footprints consumed. The countryside has vanished now, the way forward veiled with a fine mist, and I know, though I have never been here before, that just ahead in the distance I will come to a place where the path diverges and the air is still and thoughtful.

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