She ate a chicken salad and drank two glasses of wine. She was no longer a vegetarian. It was difficult to stay slim on all those pulses. A man was playing the piano—very well, not just the usual lounge songs but some Chopin and Rachmaninov. Chopin reminded Viola of her mother and always made her horribly sad. Viola gave up piano lessons after Nancy’s death. If she’d kept them up she might have had a musical career. A concert pianist—well, why not?
Viola went downstairs to the toilets. There was a fragment of a mirror down there, the mirror that used to be behind the bar when this was “Bettys Bar” during the war. The RAF crews used to scratch their names on the glass. Her father had told her about Bettys Bar, how he used to drink here during the war, but she hadn’t really listened to his reminiscences. Now the mirror was a relic. Nearly all of these men who had left their names behind would be dead now. Many of them would have died during the war, Viola supposed. She peered at the near-illegible names. Had her father left his name behind here? She wished she had asked him about his war when he was still compos mentis. She might have been able to use his memories as the basis of a novel. One that everyone would respect. People always took war novels seriously.
When she sat back down at her table she found that a group of men dressed as condoms were staggering across St. Helen’s Square. They were in one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe and they were dressed as condoms. What was wrong with Benidorm? Or Magaluf? (“You want everyone to behave better, but you don’t behave better yourself,” Bertie said.)
One of the condom men squashed himself like an insect against the large plate-glass of Bettys and leered at the diners. The pianist glanced up from his keyboard and then continued serenely with Debussy. A van drew up in the centre of St. Helen’s Square and disgorged several people dressed as zombies. The zombies proceeded to chase the men who were dressed as condoms. The condom men didn’t seem very surprised, as if they were expecting to be chased by zombies. (“They pay for it,” Bertie said.) Was this fun? Viola despaired. It was possible, she thought, that she had won the race to reach the end of civilization. There was no prize. Obviously.
But not quite yet. The finishing line was in sight but Viola was still to stumble over it. She left Bettys and negotiated her way back across Lendal Bridge, where the atmosphere was decidedly rowdier now. Somehow or other she became accidentally entangled with Amy’s Single Ladies, a brood who were utterly dishevelled by drink and being led by the eponymous Amy herself, tiara askew, a sash across a cheap bustier proclaiming her “The Bride” and an L-plate attached to her not-insignificant rump. What had happened to girls? Was this what Emily Davison had thrown herself beneath a horse for? So girls could wear light-up penises on their heads and eat cupcakes? Really? Every time they encountered a male of the species they each held up a finger and screamed, “Put a ring on it!” before hanging on to each other because they were collapsing with the humour of it. “I’m going to wet myself!” one of them shrieked.
A herd of stags streamed around Viola. “Cheer up, you old bag!” one of them yelled at her. “You might get lucky if you stop looking so miserable.” Viola stomped on, a boiling fury inside. The cracks and fissures spreading, crazing the surface of her heart. She was an overstrung piano, all the wires about to rupture and spring apart in a dreadful cataclysm of metaphors.
How could people be so stupid and ignorant? (“Why are you angry all the time?” Sunny asked her long ago. “Why not?” she snapped.) And why didn’t her children love her? Why did no one love her? And why was she so lonely and bored and, let’s face it, downright wretched and—
She went flying, tripping on a paving slab, landing heavily, bone on stone, on her hands and knees, like a leaden cat, everything in her head silenced by the shock for a moment. Her knees hurt so much she didn’t want to move. Were her kneecaps broken? A stag made some ribald comment about the position she was in and a ripe Geordie accent, a woman, told him to fuck off. Viola sat back, kneeling on the pavement, knees screaming. A pink T-shirt appeared at eye-level. Rhinestones spelled out “Slutz Go Nutz in York.” A woman—a girl really, younger than her smoker’s voice, her face smiley and concerned—hunkered down next to Viola and said, “Are you all right, pet?”