Chapter 11

Tiger

Rain ticked against the café window with the small, persistent sound of someone testing a fingernail against the glass. Beyond it, the streetlights were still burning. Their reflections stretched across the wet pavement and broke in the puddles whenever the wind passed over them, and the morning had made so little progress that Hank could see himself in the window more clearly than he could see the buildings opposite. A big man in a damp coat, sitting too close to his wife. Behind his reflection, the café lights shone over the counter and the glass cabinet of cakes, lending everything a warmth the weather outside seemed determined to take away.

He had chosen the corner booth because Mary liked it. From here she could watch the street without sitting in the draught from the door, and there was room for her handbag on the seat. There was rather less room for Hank. His shoulder pressed against hers, his knee had found something hard beneath the table, and every time he moved he had to remember the little vase of flowers standing near his elbow. Once, being this size had been useful. Nowadays it mostly meant apologising to furniture. He shifted his leg carefully and felt Mary shiver beside him, although the café smelled of hot coffee and warm pastry and his coat had already begun to make him sweat.

Two slices of coffee and walnut cake stood before them on white plates. There was a candle in Mary’s, planted at a slight angle in the icing. Pete had brought it out himself, looking pleased with the arrangement, and Hank had been pleased too until Mary reached for her fork. Her fingers trembled. Only a little; she steadied them against the edge of the plate, so neatly that someone who hadn’t spent most of his life watching those hands might have missed it. Hank watched the candle instead. The wax had softened on one side, and a clear drop was working its way towards the cake.

“Make a wish,” he said, leaning towards her so she would hear him over the hiss of the coffee machine. Mary gave a small laugh and looked at the candle as though it were an unreasonable request from a person too young to know better. “At sixty-three? What more is there to wish for?” Still, she set down the fork and closed her eyes. Her lips moved once. Hank looked away while she did it; a wish was a private thing, even after all their years together. When she blew out the flame, the smoke drifted between them, carrying the faint, bitter smell of the extinguished wick.

He laid his hand over hers. He had meant only to hold it, but the cold of her fingers startled him and he closed his hand too firmly. “Happy birthday, Tiger,” he murmured, bending to kiss her. Her lips were familiar beneath his, and for a moment there was the welcome relief of doing something he knew how to do. Then she pulled her hand back. “Hank, not so rough.” She flexed her fingers and gave him the look he had earned often enough to recognise immediately. “You forget your own strength, and I’m not as tough as you think I am.”

“Nah,” he said. “Ya still tough. Always be tough.” She attempted an eye roll, but the smile that followed seemed to cost her something. He wished he hadn’t said it quite like that. It was what he always said, and usually she liked hearing it; usually she would tell him he was a foolish old man and squeeze his arm. This morning she rested her hand beside the plate and let the matter pass. He looked down at the cake, at the pale little hole where she had pulled out the candle, and wondered whether telling a person they were strong could sometimes make it harder for them to say they weren’t.

At the next table, a young couple were sharing a croissant and talking in the low voices of people who found even breakfast worth discussing together. An elderly man near the window snapped his newspaper into a more manageable shape. The folded front page showed police outside a research building, with SOME THINGS ARE NOT YOURS TO SEE painted across its entrance. Hank glanced at the photograph before the man folded that away too. A waitress went past with eggs and toast, the plates balanced along her forearm, and someone at the counter laughed. Hank had always liked the café in the morning. People came here with ordinary appetites and ordinary complaints, wanting another coffee or a little more butter, annoyed about the weather because they expected to be around for better weather later. He wanted Mary to pick up her fork. He wanted to hear her complain that Pete had been mean with the walnuts.

Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and brought out the present. It was a small package, neatly wrapped, and he slid it across the table with considerably more care than he had shown her hand. “Open it,” he said. Mary looked from the package to him, and something of her usual expression returned: that fond suspicion with which she received any evidence that he had been spending money. She worked a finger beneath the folded paper and eased it loose rather than tearing it. He waited while she opened the other end. Mary saved wrapping paper. Hank had never understood how something that had already done its job could be worth keeping, but he liked that she did it, liked the little flattened stack she would carry home as if the present had included this too.

The silver locket lay in its box. It was simple, smooth-faced, small enough that it wouldn’t look heavy against her neck. She drew a breath and touched it with the tip of one finger, then lifted it into her palm. Hank watched her face and forgot, briefly, about the café and the rain and his knee pressing against the table. “I love ya, Mary,” he said. The words came out rougher than he intended. “With all my self.” He paused, trying to find the rest of it, although the rest had never changed. “You still pretty as the day I met ya.”

“Oh, Hank.” She lowered her eyes, smiling at the locket. “You always say that.” He nodded, because he did, and because there were some things a man ought to go on saying for as long as he was given the opportunity. “And I always mean it.” She took his hand and kissed his knuckles. Her lips lingered against the thickened skin, and he felt the familiar smallness of her hand around his, the touch that could settle him more quickly than any amount of good advice. She had held that hand when it was swollen and when it shook with anger, when there was money coming in and when there wasn’t. He turned it carefully beneath hers and began rubbing her fingers between his palms.

They were still cold. He worked gently this time, watching her to make sure he wasn’t hurting her. “Ya hands are freezin’,” he said. “Ya warm enough, Tiger?” Mary withdrew them before he could feel whether he had made any difference. “I’m fine.” She placed the locket back in its box and gathered the paper around it, smoothing a crease with her thumb. “However, it’s a bit early for cake. Do you mind if we take the cake home?” Her voice had the composed, practical quality she used when she wanted a decision made without a discussion. He knew it well. Usually it concerned something he had left in the wrong place.

He looked at her plate. She had barely disturbed the icing. Yesterday she hadn’t wanted breakfast, and at lunchtime there had been half a sandwich left, which she had said she would finish later. He couldn’t remember seeing her finish it. Then she had fallen asleep in front of the television, her dinner cooling on the tray while he watched the programme with the volume turned down. At the time he had been glad she was resting. Now those separate little things had come together, and he couldn’t stop them coming together. He tried to remember her last proper meal and found himself remembering what he had cooked instead of what she had eaten.

“Sure,” he said. “If that’s what the birthday gal wants.” Mary began wrapping the slices in napkins, folding the corners over the icing with patient concentration. He should have asked Pete for a box, but she was already putting them into her handbag, and he knew better than to interrupt a system in operation. The locket followed, tucked somewhere safer. “We’ll bring it along,” Hank added. “Elizabeth’ll be over later.” Mary’s hands stopped on the clasp of her bag. She looked up at him, and there was a brightness in her face that made him glad of his mistake before he had quite understood he’d made one. “Elizabeth’s coming?”

He groaned and brought a hand to his forehead. “That was supposed to be a surprise.” Mary smiled properly then, and he would have ruined another dozen surprises to see her do it again. “Ah, well,” he said. “Let’s get ya home before ya turn to ice.” He eased himself out of the booth, lifting his knee clear of the table support and turning sideways so his coat wouldn’t sweep the vase onto the floor. Mary took a little longer gathering herself. He kept a hand near her elbow without touching it, pretending to be occupied with the buttons of his coat until she was standing.

Pete caught his eye from behind the till. “Hey, Hank. You and the missus ready to settle up?” Hank went over with a smile already arranged on his face. “Morning, Pete. Yep. What’s the damage?” He reached into his pocket for the old brown envelope. The paper was soft at the folds and worn pale along the edges, and he knew before he opened it that it felt too thin. He put his thumb inside anyway. There was one dollar note. He separated the sides, looking behind it, then looked again, as though a second note might have adhered to the paper and require a more careful inspection.

There had been more last night. He could have sworn there had been more. He remembered holding the envelope, remembered thinking there was enough for the morning, but he couldn’t summon the actual notes. That was the trouble lately: he remembered being certain without remembering what had made him certain. At sixty-seven he was four years older than Mary, and sometimes those four years seemed a considerable distance. What he wouldn’t give to be sixty-three again. He left the dollar in the envelope and put his other hand into his jacket pocket, bringing out a collection of loose change. The coins sat in his palm, mixed denominations, too few of the larger ones.

Pete glanced at the money, then at Hank. “Not today,” he said. “This one’s on the house. A birthday present for Mary.” Hank’s fingers closed over the coins. There was a protest he ought to make, a decent and familiar sentence about paying his own way, but he knew what would happen if Pete accepted it. They would both have to stand there while he counted. Behind him, Mary was waiting by the booth with her handbag held in front of her, and he didn’t want her coming over to see what was wrong. He drew breath, still trying to find a way of accepting that didn’t feel like accepting, and Pete leaned an elbow on the counter.

“You know, my old dad was probably your biggest fan,” he said. “I think he would’ve liked the chance to buy Mary a slice of birthday cake. What d’you say? For my old dad?” Hank looked at him. Pete had his father’s eyes, though he hadn’t noticed it until that moment, or perhaps had noticed and forgotten. The same patient expression, giving him somewhere to put his pride without making a ceremony of it. “That’s real kind of ya, Pete,” he said at last. “Ya old man was a good guy. Real good.” He slipped the coins back into his pocket, where they landed with a small, embarrassing clatter.

Pete waved away the thanks. “My dad used to say nobody ever hit the ring like you. Hank the Tank, he called you.” He grinned, pleased with the name. Hank had heard it shouted by men with beer on their breath and printed above photographs in which he barely recognised his own face. Coming from Pete, here among the cakes and the coffee cups, it sounded like something belonging to a distant relation. “He told me some tall stories about you,” Pete went on. “Boy, did he tell me some stories. Near the end, though, he got a little mixed up. It was expected. The doctor warned us. Said we were lucky he was as lucid as he was.”

The grin faltered, and Pete looked down at the counter for a moment. Hank waited. He knew how a pleasant memory could take a wrong turning; one moment a man was telling you something funny his father had said, and the next he was back beside a bed. Then Pete gave a short laugh, recovering the thread. “You know, he once told me the funniest thing. Said you fought two men at once. In the same ring, just for charity. Took them both down.” He shook his head affectionately. “I didn’t argue with him. Seemed a good story to let him keep.”

Hank chuckled and folded the envelope along its old crease. “Yeah, sounds like ya old man got a few details wrong. It was for charity, though. The orphanage needed a new roof, and the council wouldn’t fork a cent. I had some boxers who’d been wanting a crack at me, so I gave ’em a call.” He tucked the envelope away. “Mary arranged the tickets and the money. She was good at that stuff.” He glanced towards her, standing ready with her coat fastened and her bag tucked under her arm. “Thanks again for the cake, Pete.”

He turned carefully between the counter and the nearest chair and went back to Mary. Behind him, Pete straightened. “How many was it, then?” A gust hit the window, rattling the glass in its frame, and Hank didn’t catch the question. He took the umbrella from beside the booth and offered Mary his arm. When he opened the café door, the wind pushed cold rain across the threshold and lifted the edge of the newspaper by the window. He held the door firmly while Mary moved beside him, judging the step down to the pavement.

“Wait—Hank!” Pete called. “How many?” The gust eased. In the sudden quieter interval, Hank looked back, one hand on the door and the other resting lightly against Mary’s arm. “Oh, it was three,” he said. “Knocked out two in the first round. The third went down in the second.” The young couple had stopped talking. Pete stared at him across the café, his expression changing as he reconsidered what he’d heard. “Three?” Mary smiled up at Hank, then towards the counter. “Oh, I remember that one. For the children at the orphanage.” She said it with the easy pleasure of remembering a day on which things had worked out well.

“Bye, Pete. Thanks again.” Hank tipped an imaginary hat, ducked beneath the door frame and stepped out beside her. The door closed, restoring the café’s warmth and its small, comfortable sounds. Pete remained behind the till with his arms slowly settling at his sides. Three. He looked towards the window, where the great shape of Hank Armstrong was blurred by rain, and tried to remember what else his father had told him. There had been so many stories. He had listened kindly to some of them, particularly towards the end.

Outside, Hank pressed the umbrella catch with his thumb. The old mechanism resisted, then released with a jerk, and he steadied it before the wind could turn it inside out. Rain struck the fabric hard enough to drown the sound of traffic. “Stay close, Tiger,” he said. “Ain’t lettin’ ya get wet.” He drew Mary beneath it and wrapped his arm around her, careful now of the pressure of his hand. She settled against his side while he lowered the umbrella towards the wind. There was a puddle across the pavement ahead, and he guided her around it, matching his stride to hers as they made their way home.