Alison Moore - He Wants

THE FRONT DOOR is mostly glass, a pane as tall and wide as a man. In town, at night, the shopfront windows are protected with steel mesh screens and metal shutters. Even the churches have grilles over the stained-glass windows. This caf is not in the town, though; it is in the village and the owner has nothing like that, just a lock on the wooden frame of this single-glazed door. It is not nighttime anyway; it is broad daylight, mid-morning. The doorframe is painted yellow, a warm, bright yellow like sunshine or pollen.

There is a handmade sign hanging on the door, behind the glass. It says, WELCOME, but the lettering is small and the greeting appears tentative. It is the sort of sign that is hung with string and could be flipped around when your welcome was withdrawn. Underneath it, there is another, larger one saying, NO DOGS. It is not the sort that can be turned to say something different; it is stuck to the glass.

Sydney ties his dogs lead to a drainpipe. The dog settles down on the slabs, sighing through her nostrils as she watches Sydney walk away.

Inside the caf, only one of the tables is occupied, by a young woman breastfeeding a baby. Sydney slips off the rucksack he is carrying, pulls out a chair and sits down opposite her. Hello, he says, smiling, showing his teeth. Youre Ruth.

He has disturbed the baby, who is twisting around now, looking for the source of the deep voice, while the mother struggles to get the baby feeding again, her milk wasting.

No, she says. Im not.

Sydney regards her while he considers this, and then excuses himself. He scrapes back his chair and stands, looking around. He is ravenous, his stomach growling like something at the zoo waiting to be thrown some meat. He wants a McDonalds, or an all-you-can-eat buffet, but instead he is here. There is salad behind glass on the far side of the room.

He wanders over to the counter. Looking towards a doorway at the back of the caf, he calls out, Hello? The doorway is hung with a curtain of thin plastic strips. No one comes through. Sydney waits, looking at the plated salads, the mottled bananas, the Death by chocolate on the blackboard. Hello? he calls again. A radio is on behind the curtain. He can hear adverts, the jingles of a local station. He has begun to move towards the hatch via which he could get behind the counter, when through the curtain comes a man in a floral apron, his arms opening wide for Sydney, his smile broad, although there is anxiety in the straining of the skin around his eyes. He says to Sydney, So, youre back, are you? Lowering his arms again, he leans his weight on the counter between them. Its changed a bit around here since you last saw it, eh?

Not that much, says Sydney, removing his coat.

The mans gaze travels from the thinness of Sydneys silver-stubbled face down to the leanness of the body emerging from the shabby, gabardine coat. Are you hungry? He waves a hand towards the fridge and says, What do you want?

I dont want salad, says Sydney. I need a bowl of water for the dog.

Youve got a new dog?

Its my old dogs puppy, says Sydney. Shes old herself now though. A friend of mines been looking after her while Ive been away.

The man finds an empty ice cream tub and fills it with cold tap water. Ill take this out to her, he says. You have a think about what you want.

Sydney wanders back over to where the mother still sits with her baby, who is latched on again. Sitting down at an adjacent table, Sydney stretches out his long legs until his feet are underneath the womans table. Youre not Ruth? he says.

Im not Ruth, she says, without looking up.

The man in the apron, having taken the water out to the dog, stops on his way back to the counter to take the womans empty coffee cup away.

Ill have another cup of coffee, please, she says.

Ill get this one, says Sydney, putting his hand into his pocket and pulling out a pound note. The man raises an eyebrow at Sydney, who at that moment feels like a child trying to buy something with toy money. Shaking his head, the man goes off to fetch the coffee, leaving Sydney to put away his redundant bank note. Sydney turns to the woman. My names Sydney, he says, with a y, like the capital of Australia.

Sydneys not the capital of Australia, she says.

Sydney sits back, withdrawing his limbs, his foot knocking against the leg of her table. The baby jerks its head back and the mother winces.

The man returns with the womans cup of coffee. Looking at Sydneys trainers, and at his rucksack, onto which the flags of various countries have been sewn, he says to Sydney, You look like youre ready for a quick getaway. Are you off somewhere?

Not today, says Sydney. Im meeting someone here.

Who are you meeting? asks the man.

A lady called Ruth.

Youre meeting her here? The man, glancing at the little plastic clock on the wall, says, Barry Bolton will be here soon.

Sydney reaches instantly for his coat.

Owe him money? asks the man, regarding Sydney with concern.

Sydney doesnt reply but he is pushing back his chair, getting to his feet. He puts on his coat, picks up his rucksack and moves towards the door. As he ducks out, the bell over the door jangles like a town criers handbell and the welcome sign swings as the door closes behind him.

The debt is decades old. He has no idea now of its size.

When the dog sees Sydney coming out of the caf, she begins to whine for him. Sydney releases her from the drainpipe and hurries the short distance to a row of new cottages, slipping into the front garden of one. He does not know who lives here. He positions himself inside an open porch, peering at the nearby cars, which are all parked and empty. He does not know what Ruths car looks like but she does not seem to be here yet. He turns his head in the opposite direction and sees Barry Bolton walking down the hill, coming from the butchers towards the caf. Sydney puts his hand to his chest, feeling a twinge in his heart.

Barry is a big man, although his feet are small enough that he can wear his mothers shoes. He avoids stepping, with his little feet, on the cracks between the paving stones. Reaching the caf, he goes inside. In less than a minute, he is out again, holding an envelope. He crosses the road and sits down on a bench in the middle of the village green, across from the caf. Planting his small feet wide, he opens the envelope, takes out a wad of bank notes and counts them. When he has counted them twice, he puts them back in the envelope and tucks it into an inside pocket of his coat. He continues to sit, though. He looks like a man who is waiting for something.

Sydney, loitering in the porch, wishes that the day was not so bright, that he was not so exposed. He would prefer shadow. He looks at his watch, wondering how long he will have to stay there, hiding like some scallywag.

There is a sign in the living-room window, advertising a vacant bed. Bed and Breakfast, it says. Sydney wonders whether anyone ever answers the advert, whether anyone ever comes to this quiet village to occupy that spare bed. Should the owner of the house come to the door and discover him standing in the porch, Sydney will ask about the room; he will express an interest in the bed.

It is chilly. He is seizing up from the cold and from standing for so long. The dog is lying on her belly again, on the porchs stone tiles. Sydney, slowly, stiffly, joins her down there, lowering his thin backside to the ground. The dog gazes at him with her big, brown eyes. It looks like love but she barely knows him. He only recently picked her up from his friend, the friend with whom he had left his dog before going away. Technically, this is not his dog. Really, this offspring of his dog belongs to his friend, but this friend, having taken receipt of a dog, felt that a dog rather than an empty dog collar, an empty dog bowl, an empty dog bed is what needed to be returned to Sydney in due course. This friend knows Barry Bolton too and has perhaps learnt to avoid having debts. Sydney wonders if the dog is missing the friend who was, until this morning, her owner, or whether all she really wants is to know where her next meal is coming from.