So, I see this tall girl in the coffee shop. Actually, she’s the waitress, about to pour my coffee. She wears a short black skirt, black waitressy blouse, nipped at the waist. She has dark hair, shiny, only partly contained by a voluminous Edwardianesque bun. And suddenly I am held spellbound. I dispute biology as an explanation for this moment. This is spiritual.
She is the most striking of beauties, this young Lancashire girl. No make-up, yet easily the better of any movie star. She has dark brows, thick, expressive in their tilt, green-blue eyes, a wide mouth, full Pre Raphaelite lips held tight for now as she pours. She will be quick to smile, I suspect, but for now restrained. She is the hired help, new I think, a minimum wage slaver, old enough to kill for Queen and country, but not old enough to earn a so called living wage.
It is no longer the most salubrious of establishments, this cafe. The table next to mine is awash with spilled tea and the sloppings of careless diners, now flown. The puddled tea drips onto the floor, onto the chairs pushed carelessly back as if in an emergency. This same beauty of a girl approaches resignedly with mop, dishcloth, squirt bottle of disinfectant, pulls back her hair, secures it, goes to work.
Her hands are beautiful. She has long fingers, lightly tanned, delicate. They should be adorned with gold, silver, diamonds – perhaps one day, but for now no man has claimed her.
I notice how she holds herself at a distance from the slop, little fingers aloft, some part of her resisting the plunge into this squalid defecation. She is ‘S’ shaped in her stance, tummy out, chest drawn in to a boyish flatness, her full height reeled back as if self conscious of her commanding stature. She was born to better things than this. I know I am romanticising, but there is something in this moment that touches me.
I am just a tired old salary-man, and a writer, of sorts. My gaze I hope is discrete, analytical and searching for traces of Zen in the person of this girl. There is nothing prurient about it. I am admiring, yes, a little awe-struck, too, but am entirely without expectation of that certain sort. Girls of this age long ago became my daughters, no longer imagined lovers. I’m not sure when this transition took place, but I am grateful for the clarity it adds to one’s vision.
She catches my eye, smiles that full mouthed smile as she spreads a dishcloth over the mess. She is without artifice, graceful as a princess.
The afternoon is hot, blue skied, sunshiny. It is a Friday, after the long ache of a miserable working week. I feel the relief of it washing through me with each sip of the coffee she has poured. Her brief smile, aimed at me, tops it all, and I am honoured to return it, this quiet moment of intimacy. It’s as well she cannot intuit the depth of my compassion, or she would think me strange. Strange too the sense of my appreciation for her presence at this moment. It is as if I have invented her.
I shall write of her, I think – indeed am already sketching out an opening draft in my head. I must tap it into my Droid quickly or it will go. Then I’ll smooth it out on the blog tonight. And when I read back on this in years to come I will wonder if life has faded her, for life teaches us such perfection as this is ephemeral, like the cherry blossom, sudden come and breathtaking awhile, only to be lost in the first storms of life.
The Rivendale Review 