Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Turned out, in the whole of London, there weren’t many options for breakfast at half four in the morning, but two of them were in Bishopsgate.
From the pictures on Google, one of them artfully smeared colourful splotches of pureed carrot on the side of your plate, garnished everything with pea shoots and charged for the privilege of sitting inside a goldfish bowl, where anyone walking past could see you burning money to share air with a batch of B-list celebrities.
According to Sev, who declined to join us.
The other place did, you know, actual breakfast. So I put my foot down, and we went there.
And stood outside the narrow black-painted frontage with helpful 24/7 sign dangling above the entrance, squinting past a tray of cakes shoved up against the glass, camouflaging the absolute carnage inside.
Simon glanced at me. “Are you sure you don’t want to try Possimus?”
At the largest of the tables, surrounded by a sea of pint glasses, a red-faced hairy bloke bulged out of a PVC ‘sexy bride’ outfit.
A lot more Rugby Team Hazing than Rocky Horror Picture Show.
He appeared to be shovelling mouthfuls from a stack of burgers into his face, while two of his mates bellowed encouragement at him like he was Olympic weight-lifting.
They all had matching t-shirts on.
They said Lash. And Banter.
And ALEX’S STAG DOOO!!!!
“Positive.”
No way was I dealing with pea shoots and smeared puree at this godforsaken hour. Not after I’d blundered into the biggest mistake of my life. Dealing with this lot was miles better than the head-fuck that would be.
Snorting like a bull, Stag-Do Alex semi-regurgitated a mouthful, and kept going anyway. Simon grimaced.
Okay, maybe not miles better. But definite kilometres.
“Do you think,” Simon asked, “this is where all the straight boys who never picked me for their team in PE wind up in life?”
“At least they’re preoccupied. Didn’t Richard Whittaker have a stag-do like this?” Maybe all this was forgivable behaviour if your house used to have a moat around it.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
“He hasn’t had it yet.” Simon failed to move towards the door, folding his arms tight across his chest instead. Wrinkling his jacket for days. I wanted to push his shoulders down and give him a neck rub. His face changed when he wasn’t smiling.
“This is going to be distinctly unpleasant.”
“Why? You reckon eating half a cow’s compulsory?”
His jaw muscle rippled. “It looks very loud in there.”
“Good job you can switch your hearing aids off isn’t it?”
He huffed. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer conversation over breakfast.”
“If only,” I sighed, theatrically, “there was some non-verbal way of communicating we both understood.”
Simon side-eyed me. His unamused face was absolutely cracking.
“Wait. I’ve got it. Get this. They could call it…” I reached up, fingers stretched wide, making physical space to sketch the dazzling brightness of my revelation in the sky. “Sign Language.”
Simon rolled his eyes, but deep, deep down he knew I was hilarious. I could tell.
“Possimus would be oik-free and brightly lit. I could lip-read, and you wouldn’t have to spend your entire weekend working. It would be the sensible option.”
“Yeeaah.” What exactly about this evening made him think I gravitated towards the sensible option? “Nice try. BSL’s my first language, and I want a bacon stottie.”
Confusion clouded Simon’s face. “A stottie?”
“Sandwich, roll, bap. I don’t care as long as it’s bread. We’re going in.”
Shouldering the narrow door open set the bell jangling right as one of Stag-Do Alex’s mates yelled Go on my son!
Miscalculation.
An entire table-full of them started drumming their fists with a rising Ooooohhhh that went on, and on. And on.
They were everywhere. An entire sports team of stag-doers. Stagging all over the place.
For a solid, static pause, Simon pressed his lips in on themselves. Pea shoots and carrot puree here we come in five, four, three, two—
One by one, he flicked the little switches on the side of his hearing aids. Off.
“This better be the best bacon stottie of your life, Ben Cooper.”
Fuck me, was he really coming in here because I wanted to?
Drawing himself up tall, he dusted the creases out of his jacket, striding right past the lot of them like he’d never even hesitated. I didn’t not check out his arse. I wasn’t that hungover.
Squaring directly in front of the mildly terrified-looking spotty kid behind the till, Simon unfurled his twinkliest smile. “Georgia.” Name badge, not acquaintance. “We’re here for food.”
Her eyes widened slightly at the tell-tale thickness of his voice, his imprecision with his vowels. “Um..?”
Predictably, her gaze drifted in my direction like she expected me to step in. I stepped back instead. As if I’d ever undercut him.
Simon upped his volume and his elocution, still bloody smiling. “You don’t need to say anything, I can’t hear you. Just listen to my order. It’s simple.”
I nudged his arm. “Bacon sandwich on white,” I signed. “Ketchup not HP, and a coffee. Cold milk. Ta very much.”
Near the back, I managed to extract a tiny table from the stag party’s sprawl. Simon’s coffee had a little swirl drawn into the milk froth. Mine was thoroughly headless. Exactly like the rest of my evening.
Setting a knife and fork down in their appropriate places, Simon did an odd little flex of his elbows like he was testing out the reach of his jacket.
“BSL’s your first language?” he signed. “Were your parents..?” His hand ghosted towards the side of his head, reaching for the sign for Deaf, but not quite following through. Maybe his sleeve was too tight. “You’re a... what’s it called? CODA?”
“Sorry,” I signed, wrinkling my nose as I made a show of looking down at myself, and then back up at him. “Thought I’d turned into an eight-year-old for a minute there.”
Child of Deaf Adult wasn’t exactly my go-to identification these days. What with being in the tail end of my twenties and everything.
Simon almost-laughed. “You know what I mean.”
With record efficiency, Georgia appeared, balancing a pair of plates. My bacon sandwich, and a wholegrain, poached-egg, avocado-fest about to slide right off and dump itself onto the floor if she didn’t correct the vertical incline stat.
The plates clattered down. She did not attempt conversation.
“Just Mam, actually.” Clarification felt important. So did application of ketchup. “Don’t know who my dad is.”
Relevance? None. Awkward over-share percentage? Pretty fucking high. The oversized plastic tomato on the table wheezed air all over my bacon, covering the plate in the anaemic spittle of non-brand red sauce.
“Oh.” If you googled ‘taken aback’, Simon’s face would be on page one. “I’m sorry.” The absent-minded tight little circle he signed over his heart lingered. Probably the only reason he wasn’t terribly sorry was because he couldn’t make the sign that big with his jacket on.
“Why?” I signed one-handed, still faffing about with the ketchup.
“She was awesome.” Clearly his family was so far on the fully functional scale unintended single-parenting counted as a tragedy.
I set the useless ketchup bottle down. “Didn’t need a deadbeat taking up space around the house, did we? ”
Simon didn’t pick his cutlery up. “I thought you didn’t know him. He could be Prime Minister.”
“Pretty sure that’d be worse than a deadbeat.”
I grabbed the sauce bottle again and gave it a solid shake, a hard squeeze. And it splurged red over my entire plate.
Fantastic.
“Anyway,”I signed, “he didn’t think Mam was worth hanging about for. Everything I need to know about him, isn’t it?”
Ketchup oozed down the sides of my sandwich as I pressed the top slice of bread back on, coating me in stickiness. Simon looked faintly appalled. I tried not to notice.
“I suppose it is.” He tilted his head, watching me ruin half a dozen tiny napkins from the holder trying to get my hands clean like he’d never seen anything more fascinating in his life. My contribution to global deforestation. Go me.
The tip of his knife snagged the egg on his plate and orange-gold bled out all over his toast. He chewed slowly. Not that I was watching his mouth. Or the way he swallowed.
Simon set down his probably-flat-white to sign. “Is she why you’re an interpreter now?”
That old question.
“In a way.” That old cop-out. “Got myself an undergraduate and a masters in it, thank you very much.” I polished my blunt nails on the front of my crumpled shirt. What was the use of all the student debt and over-qualification if I couldn’t distract people with it?
“Oh, really? And you still took over my meeting?”
I grimaced. “Sorry. I bet you’re thinking I forged my way onto the register with a knock-off evening class to get a job now, right?”
Simon clacked his teeth at me, shaking his head softly. “I know you’re fully qualified.”
Did he though? “You’ve never asked about it.”
“Why would I ask? You’re far more fluent than me.”
I ducked my head. How pathetic – getting giddy over a fact, as if he was paying me a personal compliment. “Not exactly a high bar.”
“Excuse me?” Oh, I’d excuse him anything with his eyes gleaming gold at me under the cafe lights, all full of laughter and put-on outrage. “Blame the NHS. They told my parents I wouldn’t need it. Didn’t learn until I was a teenager.”
“Mainstream school, right?” I tilted my head, sucking a breath over my teeth, hamming up my wince. “I can tell.”
Simon snorted another laugh. I should be keeping tally. When this all went tits-up, stand-up comedy might pay the bills.
“You know, before tonight, I was under the impression you were a nice guy. And here you are, bullying me about my linguistic deficiencies and my upbringing...”
“Big words. Showing off now?”
He rolled his eyes. “I know big words. Normally I’m watching you use them.”
A little bubble of opportunity tap danced to life in my stomach. Fred Astairing all over the place. Like any language, there was a difference between understanding someone else, and being able to string your own sentences together.
“We could do this whenever you like. BSL and breakfast.”
Simon ate his eggs, and didn’t say anything. Probably because he was using cutlery.
“My flatmate teaches all the way up to Level 3.” I told him, carrying on, because I didn’t know when to shut up. “He’s always going on about how conversation’s important for building fluency.”
Leaning back, Simon pulled a paper napkin from the holder and wiped his fingers. “Afraid you’re far too expensive already,” he signed. “I don’t have a budget for conversation classes on top of your usual hours.”
He tossed the crumpled paper ball down onto his empty plate.
“What? No. That’s not what I—”
How many different ways could I forget we weren’t friends just because I’d lied to everyone about us being together? Just because he’d snogged me back on a rooftop at sunrise.
I stared at the ball of his napkin.
“You wouldn’t have to pay me.”
He employed me. That was it. All he wanted. I needed to respect that. He didn’t even do relationships. Unless they were fake ones, apparently.
“Two degrees and you want to give your time away for free? I’m not a charity case. Or an antelope.”
Oh give up, Ben. Give up now.
“It wouldn’t have to be work.”
Simon looked pained. “I appreciate you think you’re being helpful, but you’re the only one I sign with. BSL’s a tool for me. It helps me keep up in a hearing workplace. But that’s all I’ve ever needed it to be.”
My jaw hinged open. That made negative sense. His perfect parents had to have learnt. Perfect parents did stuff like that for their kids. TV told me so.
“A tool,” I echoed, scrunching up my face to underline my total disagreement. “It’s not though, is it? It’s a community of language users. A whole culture.”
Simon sighed. “One I’m not part of.”
I slumped back, shoving my plate away, crusts abandoned in the ketchup massacre. Message received – we had no inroads to a real connection, even if we were supposed to fake one.
“You could be, though.”
“No, I couldn’t.” Simon stopped signing as he stood from the table. “I speak too much,” he said, like he was determined to underline his point. “And you know what? I’m alright with being not-quite-Black-enough and not-quite-white-enough without being not-quite-Deaf-enough too.”
His smile shone – all teeth – but for the first time I didn’t believe it.
“At least,” I signed, “no one’s ever told you you’re not-quite-gay-enough.”
My entire face spontaneously combusted. Nice to meet you. I’m a total fail-case and my fully-hearing white guy issues are clearly bigger than yours.
Behind Simon, Stag-Do-Alex’s chair screeched back.
Lashed Lad stumbled, jolting him into the edge of our table.
The room erupted into a beery accordion wheeze of cheering, slow-motion crossfading into a stumbled rendition of the national anthem.
With half the words missing. And Alex started pouring his pint straight down his gullet with enviable control of his gag reflex.
“God save our gracious Que- Oh, shit it’s King now isn’t it? ”
Simon raised his eyes to the ceiling like he really believed there was someone sitting on a cloud who might helpfully deign to smite the lot of them with a lightning bolt.
“Expense yourself a cab home,” he signed, short and hurried. “I’ll message you tomorrow. Get some sleep.”