Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #45
He leaves the bathroom without looking at the girl still waiting and goes directly to his cabin where he dresses hurriedly.
Now something for the pigeon, the greedy, gobbling thing that lives inside him and makes him do stupid things from sheer appetite.
He pulls the door to his cabin shut and shrugs a jumper over his head.
It smells musty, like all his clothes, but the personal washing machine in the Grit is fully booked for tomorrow.
He’ll just have to wait and smell in the meantime.
Like every night, the dining car is full of musicians starting on their second bottles of wine and dancers sitting cross-legged on chairs pushing food around their plates.
Lance the trumpet is nuzzling Yolanda’s neck but as he takes a sip from his beer Josh notices him glance at Mara, deep in conversation with Stuart.
Michael sits on his own, writing in a notebook with his empty plate pushed aside and in the next booth sits Henry the new violinist, who is staring at Michael with that usual hungry gaze.
What exactly is it about Michael that has driven this extremely good-looking man to distraction?
What is it about the earplugs, the greasy hair and the weird shit like the mushrooms earlier that gets Henry’s blood going when he could have almost anyone on the Grub?
Perhaps it’s the helplessness that’s a turn-on, the tragedy of it, the sheer magnitude of the love Michael must have borne for the old harpist that makes Henry a fool.
If only Michael was like Anita, locking up his old love behind a wall of silence and taboo.
That’s the proper thing to do with feelings.
Tie them up in a bin bag and give them to Belinda for her to take to an incinerator on the next day off.
The queue moves slowly and Josh glances around the dining car.
The feeble attempts at decorating the carriage for Halloween are still up: the four plastic skeletons looming over them in each corner; the orange and black streamers strung with Sellotape from wall to wall; and a pumpkin squatting on an empty table without its candle.
Two nights ago a few of the corps de ballet girls were wearing nylon witches’ hats and he was genuinely amazed by the sight of them.
Is there not enough spooky shit going on here?
Tonight the fancy dress has disappeared and everyone is miserable again. Good.
But Josh remembers seeing something on the notice-board about a pledge party and he curdles.
Sod that. He’d rather go to bed and browse bullshit on his phone while Greg reads his boring books about anatomy – he’s studying to be a massage therapist after he retires, following the obvious route off the stage for a lost and limping ex-dancer, and God forbid he should actually do anything out of the ordinary – and they both pretend to be sitting in companionable silence.
The hunger in his belly is beginning to sour into a bad mood.
Shouldn’t he be able to go straight to the front?
To walk past all these others and get a tray of something hot and filling and eat it wherever he likes?
He’s the Crow, tonight at least. He’s been here for seven years, obeying the rules, paying his dues.
This place is constant lines and sharing and trying not to get in anyone else’s space.
It’s like nursery school without the naps and gold stars.
He watches Luke meander through the booths with his full tray, looking for somewhere to sit.
Just sit the fuck down, Josh thinks viciously.
Why does that kid wind him up so much? I seem to remember you also found the orchard dance hard in your first couple of months, Greg had said mildly last week at breakfast and Josh had ignored him so as not to throw his cereal at the wall.
He shuffles forwards in the queue as Gino doles out steaming plates of food and all around him the noise of the dining car drifts like smoke from its little islands around the tables and booths.
Just in front of him is the table where the three musicians sit each evening, holding court on any and every topic under the sun, especially those they know little about.
Wilf the cellist and Steve the bassoon and Jasper the timpani, who he feels as if he knows well now, after the traditional rehearsal with just him, Jasper and Cecile, counting and stamping out the irregular rhythms of the Crow’s solos.
They remind him of his granddad and great-uncles, sitting in the kitchen or on the patio or on the fold-up chairs at the edge of the common, the whisky draining from the bottle, the years-old conversations, the jokes, the soft silences, the hard gazes.
‘…So that’s why he’d say that there’ll never be harmony aboard this train, because we’re all trapped in a hierarchy that privileges the already powerful.
’ Wilf sits back with a smirk and takes a sip of his beer.
Josh tries not to listen, tries to keep his mind on the queue and the menu options but their voices boom, dominating everything.
They are the lords of the Grub. The dining car is their feasting hall and they know everyone knows it.
‘But we are a collective,’ Jasper is saying as he adjusts his eyepatch, the pointed tip of his grey goatee quivering. ‘We don’t have a dictatorial leader. We have customs and traditions we all follow because we want to and we see the value in them.’
‘No dictatorial leader! Have you heard the way Cecile talks to the dancers!’
‘But she’s not in charge of me, I do what I want.’ Steve sits back and folds his hands over the belly he’s cultivated over years of beer and bassoon.
‘As long as you play the right music for the show,’ says Wilf.
‘But that’s what I mean! I’m held here by the conventions of classical music, yes, but also everything that’s special about this place.’ Jasper clicks his fingers. ‘The pledge and the bell and all that, not by some authoritarian crackpot holding me hostage.’
‘I think you’re forgetting Belinda.’
‘She’s not in charge. She’s an administrator.’
‘And you’d say that to her face, would you?’
‘Come on, Belinda’s at best a lieutenant.’
‘So who’s in charge?’
‘No one,’ says Jasper.
‘The Apple and the Pearl,’ says Steve.
‘The Crow,’ says Wilf.
And just then, Josh reaches the front of the queue and Gino beckons him forward to the serving hatch. He passes the table where the three men sit each evening and as he shuffles past they look up from their table, catch his eye, and as one tip their pint glasses to him.
‘To the Crow,’ says Wilf with one of his booming chuckles.
‘To the Crow,’ say Steve and Jasper, and they all drain their beers and slam them on the table with a crack that echoes like a shot.
Gino waits with a ladle in one hand, a plate in the other and an expectant smile on his face. ‘What’s it for you this evening?’
‘The sweet potato, please Gino.’
‘Good choice,’ he says, spooning dumplings and curry onto the plate. ‘A new recipe and it needs a little adjustment but not too bad.’ He slides the plate across the serving hatch. ‘Here’s yours and I’ve got the other in the hot drawer when you’re ready.’
‘Thanks, Gino, I’ll be back for it.’
One for the Crow, he thinks, as he weaves his way among the tables to where Greg, Mara and Stuart sit, eating quietly.
Greg shifts his chair and slides his thumb over Josh’s hand as he sits down.
‘Good show?’ he asks gently. Greg does everything gently.
He’s the kind of guy who’d hold your hair back as you’re puking from too much tequila and never try to worm his way into your bed as payment, let you store the stupid things you bought online in his cabin while you sort the returns and wait for a day off to lug them to the post office, turn up to meet your parents with flowers for your mum and a firm handshake for your dad. Josh doesn’t deserve him. He never has.
‘Yeah, fine,’ he says, shovelling sweet potatoes with his fork. ‘You know.’
‘Your second act solo was good.’ Mara says. ‘You landed all those tours perfectly. Cecile won’t have a thing to say about it.’
Josh waves his fork morosely. ‘I’m sure she’ll find something.’
He eats without pausing, plunging forkful after forkful into his mouth, only half listening to the conversation.
Stuart is talking about an article he read this afternoon about spiders that roam the sky, and Greg is chiming in with stories of his brother’s pet tarantula.
Josh has heard these stories, first from Greg and then from his parents during that awkward lunch two years ago, when the Grub stopped in Chelmsford for a day off and Greg’s dad picked them up at the station.
He’s heard all the stories Greg has to tell by now.
They live the same lives, know the same people, live the same day over and over again.
All that changes is Gino’s menu and their roles in the show.
Although Greg’s knees are too shot to perform anything but the King or the corps de ballet these days, so his life is even more boring.
He should retire. Josh can see he’s in pain, has to lie there every night while Greg faffs about with pillows between his legs, has to help him to the ice bath, has to watch him grimace his way through the first part of ballet class while he waits for his threadbare, creaky cartilage to warm up.