Just ask Old Billy over there in the corner by the window. Or rather don't. You wouldn't get much of an answer anyway, and what little you would get would be either unintelligible or offensive. You are more likely to get a response from the bird. That's right. That's a live bird sitting on his shoulder, a hawk of some kind. No point complaining to the management about hygeine or health and safety: that would be Nic and Millie, themselves both in their 70s and by all accounts a little soft on Old Bill. When they took over the coffee shop a few years ago, they prevailed (or rather Nic did, Old Billy being a bit partial to her) upon Bill to at least leave the bird outside. No use. Every time someone opened the door the bird flew in and onto Bill's shoulder. In the end, they spread a bunch of newspaper under the table by the window on the mornings of the days he would be in, like clockwork he and the bird are. Of course, it doesn't stop the bird shitting on his cap, his shoulders, the table even. And it does rather put one off a muffin to look in his direction. But what can you do? We all have learned to live with it. It's just the newcomers to the cafe. The looks on their faces is worth the price the rest of us pay for his company.
So we are not intellectuals, or the elite, or the affluent middle class. It just so happens that quite a few of us like books and use the coffee shop to read them and talk about them. Ok, we can get a bit precious at times. But we have Old Billy, among others, to give us a tweak every now and again.
For instance, the book club. It has been on something of a hiatus. I say "book club" but we are not half so organized as that sounds. In fact, what passes for discussion of books is nothing so much as snatches of conversations when any number of us happen to be in the coffee shop on the same day. As most of the tiny village visits more than once in a week, I guess you could call us a club when we are there.
Just this week, on a particularly busy day despite the old fart with the shitty bird on his shoulder in the corner, something along these lines broke through the hub bub: "I'm sure it's wrong to go on being good for too long, till one get's miserable. And I can see you have been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy."
This came from Elena, a young incomer who always seems to be clutching a book by her favorite author of the moment. But whom was she addressing so boldly? Certainly not Mrs Bloodworth, deacon of the Anglican church and her landlady who just happened to be sitting across from her, true enough with a sour expression on her face from biting into the lemon cooked into the top of her muffin. Those within earshot peered at Elena and Mrs Bloodworth, fearing some domestic dispute was about to erupt.
"You all right, Mrs Bloodworth?" Millie standing over them with a coffee pot asked the question on all our minds. While Mrs B washed her lemon muffin down with her tea (there are some of those who drink the like in the coffee shop, Nic and Millie being soft on their sort), Elena laughed and said, "She's fine. I was just reading to her from a book I am reading now, Elizabeth Von Arnim's The Enchanted April. It's about a group of English women who rent an Italian castle for a month, each to escape the repression they experience in their every day lives. The woman in question is a neglected wife who hides her unhappiness by good works. Listen to this:
'I don't know why you insist that I am not unhappy. When you know me better I think you'll find that I am. And I'm sure you don't mean really that goodness, if one can attain it, makes one unhappy." "Yes, I do," said Mrs. Wilkins. "Our sort of goodness does. We have attained it, and we are unhappy. There are miserable sorts of goodness and happy sorts--the sort we'll have at the mediaeval castle, for instance, is the happy sort.'"
"And you're making me the miserable sort with all this drivel. A man can't have his breakfast in peace" came the protest from the corner by the window.
"Oh keep quiet, old man" Nic ventured over there to pour him some more coffee in an effort to shut him up.
But Elena just laughed again. She knew how to take Bill. "I know it sounds a bit whiny, but this was published in 1922, when it was quite common for women not to have their own money, never mind go on a vacation on their own without husbands. This despite getting the vote and all the work they did during the war years. But that's not the best part of the book. This would all sound a bit po-faced if told in a straightforward manner. But the author has such a sly, sardonic tone that you find yourself more laughing then feeling sorry for them. For instance--'Mrs Arbuthnot had learned in her long life with Frederick...where alone true joys are to be found. They are to be found only...at the feet of God. Frederick had been the kind of husband whose wife betakes herself early to the feet of God. From him to them had been a short though painful step.' The book is told mostly in that sardonic vein with little quips like that taking you by surprise."
"Sounds interesting," said Millie, looking the book over.
"Sounds like those women needed to have more children," said Bill slamming the shop door after him, the bird fixing us with a beady eye as he passed by the window.
"Old sod," said Nic. "I bet his own wife, if he ever got one, lived permanently at God's feet."
"Anything to avoid his," piped up Mrs Bloodworth, lemon muffin now safely digested.
We all had a chuckle at this, even if the image was a bit unsavory...
Account submitted by LBerube
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim published by Vintage Classics