Anne Rouse

The Street

The man at the cafe had run out of paper cups. He was a heavy-set man with greying hair that stood up at the temples as if he'd been raking it with his fingers. He pulled open this cupboard door and that, sighing. Finally he apologised, and handed me two red lollipops. He muttered, ‘On the house.’

As I left the premises he switched off the lights. The metal shutter descended. A rattle, a click, and he hurried away. Out on the street, I was no longer his concern.

Meanwhile my calls to G weren’t getting through. I could see him rushing pell-mell through the city, full of delayed purpose, breathing hard, his fists clenched with effort.

I roamed a few yards up one street, then the other. Not too far – it wasn’t a city that you could feel especially safe in. Actually, it was a city where you might find yourself at a loss very quickly. That same morning I’d wandered into someone’s flat, hung with bird cages, believing it to be a courtyard.

 The doors were often open in that city but it didn't make the street feel any safer. People only strayed into it by accident or if they had to go through it on an errand. Between its high walls they went about their business deliberately and self-consciously, as if in a play. We’d noticed this, from the café. Or rather, I did. G had been reading his guidebook.

The citizens popped up, too, when you weren't looking for them. Only that afternoon I’d noticed what I thought was the local library, an airy room full of books. I went in and walked slowly to the back window where I could just make out through the late sun’s dazzlement, a large garden. It was then I found out I wasn’t alone. An elderly man – long-haired and white-bearded – dozed upright at my elbow. He opened his unfocused eyes and, with considerable friendliness, greeted me.

What could you do with people like that? They were clearly never going to behave as you expected, much less confine themselves, in seemly fashion, to the background of your thoughts.

I go up the main, deserted street as far as I dare.  As I turn again towards the shuttered café, I see a figure run across it. G? It can’t be. This man is leaner, younger.  He disappears.

In a recess by the cafe I find a billfold. Garish credit cards spill out of it.  A small white square lies face down on the pavement. I turn it over. I peer at my own face.

When I’d last seen this billfold it was lying, plump with cash, on the narrow hotel bed in our last city. Oh, G! With tremulous hands I gather up the credit cards, the billfold, the photo and zip them into my backpack.

The light’s draining from the street. The little birds in the brambles on the cranny of waste ground are no longer chittering. No one’s to be seen.  We haven't yet found our room. Hours ago we should have risen hopefully from the sagging caned chairs and our clutter to find a hotel along one of the hidden side streets.

This hotel would have smelled of sun-warmed linen and, faintly, of lemon furniture polish.  It would boast a tiny emerald pool hidden down the steep stairs to the basement. Its bar would feel like home. The king-sized bed would barely give under our weight and the generous views would be mostly of the cathedral. Swifts would fly into the eaves under curious gargoyles at a level with our eyes.

But something else had happened.  G had gone off in his stolid task-making way to find an ATM in order to stuff the well-padded billfold to bulging with the peculiar notes of that city, just in case the hotel refused to take what we had to offer them: the credit cards, the silver chain round my neck, our blood. Wholly uninterested in that errand, I’d headed for the whatever-it-was, the library.

He’d called out, from several yards away, that he’d meet me at that café. Don't go wandering off. No, of course he hadn't said that. We’re equals. It was just an emphasis. That cafe.

I absently unwrap one of the lollipops and lick it.

I don't know why this street is so dark, as if everyone has forgotten about it. I walk in the direction we’d first come from, holding my breath.

A former health worker, Anne Rouse lives in East Sussex. She's been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Glasgow and Queens University, Belfast. Ox Eye (Bloodaxe Books), poems on personal and social change, will be out in the spring of 2022. Twitter: @rouseanne.