Exclusive short story by Scottish-based authour Regi Claire

In the heat of a sweltering Sunday, a patina of illusion shimmers over an encounter at a lake-side café between a young waitress and a man with a bag of cherries. The zigzag tattoo on his forearm tells a story; will he be able to tell it?

This girl Morena is like the cherry in my mouth: red, round, with a hard centre. I look at her as my teeth suck and scrabble at the slippery shreds of sweetness that cling so stubbornly to the stone. I can tell she’ll be perfect. I spit out the stone, phut, into my right hand, where it joins a slithery heap. Then I smile at her. “Wild cherries,” I say, my tongue slick with juice, “are the best, especially when freshly picked. Here, try one, Fräulein.” And I hold out the polythene bag, careful not to let her see the tattoo beneath my sleeve.

“I’ll get a dish for those stones.” Her polished-copper hair swings round sharply. “And forget the ‘Fräulein’.” She walks off down the terrace towards the lake-front tables with their clusters of tourists under yellow parasols, annoyed no doubt that I haven’t ordered any food, just black coffee. But she’s too young to tell me and my bag to get lost, that this is a café, not a camp. Not a camp. I feel my mind begin to wander and yank it back to the present, then help myself to another cherry, testing its firmness between thumb and forefinger before biting into it.

From under the brim of my Panama I watch Morena return with a tray, watch her summer dress flick and flare about her thighs – what’s wrong with a waitressing uniform these days? For a moment I imagine her with a belt round her waist and black boots hiding the glitter of her painted nails.

She doesn’t speak as she sets down my coffee, which has slopped over and formed a dirty-brown moat, then a stainless steel bowl of the kind used for feeding dogs. The cherry stones skitter into it almost musically. Bones make music too, I’ve learnt. Glancing up, I smile again, a flinty smile this time. She has already moved off. Behind her across the lake, the secretive crenellations of the Alps seem afloat in the heat haze, hovering in unreality.

Coffee and cherries finished, I put down a €10 note, then doff my hat at her – not in mockery but respectfully, because she’s made the grade without even trying. She has what it takes, the stone in the middle. Yes, I insist: being soft and pliant Regi Claire is Swiss by birth and upbringing. English is her fourth language. Her work has twice been shortlisted for a Saltire Book of the Year Award. Her first published story won the Edinburgh Review Tenth Anniversary Short Story Competition and another was selected for Best British Short Stories 2013. She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Queen Margaret University and teaches creative writing at the Scottish National Galleries. Her latest novel is The Waiting. She is currently completing her third collection of stories.

She lives in Edinburgh with her husband, the writer Ron Butlin, and their golden retriever.

Onever works, not when it crunch. That old codger was weird all right. A nutter. Thought he could chat her up with his stupid cherries which anyone could see were from the nearby Spar. At least he’d left a nice tip. Quite a surprise, considering his trampy clothes. They’d whiffed a bit too, sweaty-like. He’d made her uneasy with his sly ancient eyes under that tatty straw hat. They’d reminded her of little stones. Pebbles on a beach. Scoured by the waves, scorched by the sun, endlessly, until they looked kind of bleached. Stunned – if pebbles could look stunned. Well, not to worry, he was gone, and good riddance.

Approaching the table of a pensioner couple in their weekend best, Katja swayed her head to feel the bounce of her newly cut hair. What would Koni say? He’d loved her “mermaid mane”, loved to drape strands of it across her breasts, in and out of bed. That always got him going. Like a tap he was: turn him on and… She giggled. The elderly woman, who’d begun to rattle off a lengthy order, shut her mouth and kept it shut. “Excuse me,” Katja said, still giggling, and rushed off to the kitchen for a quick scoop of vanilla ice cream to cool herself down.

comes

to

the f course, Morena isn’t her real name. But you’ve guessed that, haven’t you? Too pat for a tale like mine, too neat and tidy. And neatness has never been my forte, neither in my personal appearance nor my immediate surroundings. Mind you, some people are attracted by that neglectful side. The young, for example, flirting with the idea of hippiedom, of revolt and revolution, or those leftwing enough to embrace outsiders – oddballs with and without Panamas.

Hat pushed down low, let’s join the steaming, braying herds of amblers, cyclists, skateboarders, canines and toddlers on the waterfront promenade. No way to avoid them. And so we surge for a while, them and I. Surge between fish restaurants, pizzerias, soft-ice stalls, pedalo hires, buskers, postcards on racks. My only chance to lose myself until it’s time for Morena.

Late afternoon and the sun still ferocious: it reflects off the asphalt, singes the skin, rakes it off almost. Reaching the park, I head across the parched, razorbladed grass towards the trees, which stand tall and still-green. The “tree of life” towers above them all, its wide canopy like a shield. Hundreds of years old, it has survived storms, floods, droughts, arctic spells, has survived schisms and wars, most recently the Allied bombings that destroyed the city. This, I feel, is where I belong: in the shade under that tree, inside the fence where no grass grows.

At quarter to nine Katja began to count the day’s takings in her change purse. Not bad. Böhler would be happy – might even fork out a bonus. She smiled, then remembered Koni’s text. He wouldn’t be meeting her tonight because his manager had messed up the shifts, stupid cow. Shit! Several coins had sprayed from the purse. Scrabbling between chair legs, Katja felt the blood shoot into her face. Afterwards she knocked back a bottle of Hofbräu. On the house.

As she unlocked her bicycle in the yard, the chef stuck his head out the window and shouted, “No speeding now!” She gave him the finger.

I flinch awake, roused by hooting. Too much like sirens. The ferry is out on the lake, well beyond the harbour, moving towards the rapidly sinking sun. Around me, the shadows have deepened. The café where Morena works closes at nine, I’ve checked, and now it’s ten to.

I’ve barely settled on a bench by the waterfront, near-deserted after the day’s last sailing, when the café lights go out. I hear a door banging, then a voice yells something. A few faint whirrs – and here’s Morena, legs gleaming as she comes pedalling along. That throws me. I hadn’t expected a bicycle, you see. A car wouldn’t have mattered; the nearest street is ten minutes’ walk through the park – ample opportunity. She’s getting closer. I reach into my pocket. Just as she draws level, I rise to my feet and, half-stumbling, drop a scatter of coins.

Morena smiles, brakes. “No worries.” So red, round and soft she is, on the outside.

By the time she recognises me, she has climbed off and is crouched on the promenade.

“You again,” she says, straightening abruptly. “Thought you’d gone.”

“You thought wrong, Fräulein.” I pause and look her over, from polished hair to glittering toenails and back. “Nowhere exciting to go at my age.”

She flings the money at me, then steps behind her bicycle as if the steel frame