Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

My God! Carrie thought, fixing her eyes on the stage curtains and breathing a sigh of relief at their preliminary twitchings.

‘Brazil?’

Ten minutes in, Heinz was whispering to her.

‘What?’

‘Brazil? Go on. Have one.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Go on!’

‘No. I don’t actually like brazils. Nuts give me hives.’

Heinz closed the box and rested it on his lap.

During the intermission, Heinz regaled Carrie with tales about the relative exclusivity of the Turner and Booker prizes. He liked the opera, it turned out, especially Mozart. He found camomile tea to be excellent for sleeplessness. He was a widower of seven years.

Carrie noticed how the box’s other regulars smiled at her sympathetically whenever they caught her eye. It was odd, really, because actually, with increased acquaintance, Heinz wasn’t all that bad. In fact, if anything, he’d made her the centre of attention in the box. The focus, the axis. She felt rather like Princess Margaret opening a day care centre in Fulham.

As the safety curtain rose for the second half, Heinz was telling Carrie how he’d just been to Selfridges to buy a cappuccino maker. He loved everything Italian. He’d been stationed there during the war.

As the stage curtains closed, Heinz mopped something from the corner of his eye and muttered gutturally, ‘Poor, poor old Petrushka!’

During the curtain calls Heinz told Carrie that he often felt that it was sadder to be a sad puppet than a sad person.

‘Pardon?’

‘Petrushka, the puppet. Sometimes it feels like the ballet is sadder because he is a puppet and not a living being.’

‘Oh, right. Yes.’ Carrie finished applauding and leaned over to pick up her bag. Heinz stayed where he was.

‘How will you be getting home then, Carrie?’

‘I brought my car.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘So maybe, maybe you wouldn’t mind joining an old man for a cup of coffee somewhere before you make your way back?’

‘Uh?’ Carrie was agog.

‘Oh! Um …’ She thought about it for a long moment. She imagined her quiet house, her empty bed. ‘OK,’ she said cheerfully, ‘love to.’

Sydney was late for Thursday’s class so they didn’t have a chance to chat beforehand. Afterwards though, in the sauna, they had plenty of opportunity for exchanging news. Carrie wore a white towel around her essentials and sat on the lower bench. Sydney wore nothing and sat on the upper.

‘How’d it go then?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Last night.’

‘Fine.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’ Carrie cleared her throat. ‘I mean, you know how it is when you do something alone for the first time when you’re accustomed to doing it with someone else …’

‘I guess so.’

Sydney lay down flat on her back. Whenever she lifted her shoulders or her buttocks, they stuck to the wooden boards, aided by the natural glue of her body’s moisture. The noise this made reminded Carrie of the sound of an emery board against a ragged nail.

‘Actually,’ Carrie said, grinning, ‘La Fille Mal Gardée is my favourite ballet.’

‘Really? You like an element of slapstick, huh?’

‘I suppose I must do.’

‘Myself, I prefer a tragedy. I find that tragedy best reflects my emotional and psychological state.’

Carrie turned and stared straight into Heinz’s frogspawn eyes. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘Me? Kidding? Not at all. Not at all.’

Heinz offered Carrie his family-size box of Maltesers.

‘Thanks.’

Carrie took one and popped it into her mouth. ‘That’s the strangest part …’ she said, chewing and enjoying the sensation of chocolate and malt on her tongue. ‘I’ve been to four ballets with you and never for a moment did I think you seemed like a sad or a dissatisfied person.’

It was the interval. Heinz and Carrie were propping up the theatre bar. Heinz had discovered that Carrie’s favourite winter tipple was port and lemon. He’d taken to ordering her one before the show. This meant they didn’t have to wait to be served during the intermission.

Heinz smiled at Carrie. ‘You see the best in everyone.’

‘Maybe I’m just insensitive.’

‘You? Insensitive? Never. You’re an angel.’

A man standing just to Carrie’s left turned and stared at them. Carrie caught his eye. His expression was a mixture of amusement and confusion. Carrie took a sip of her drink. People were so funny, the way they stared. Their quizzical expressions. It had begun to dawn on her that when she was out with Heinz she became a puzzle. She became mysterious.

Alone, at home, in life, she felt like something dried-up, wrung-out and innocuous. Out with Heinz, she felt like she was transformed into something much less explicable.

Heinz was bossy and opinionated but he wasn’t entirely unobservant. He rolled his eyes at Carrie. ‘Probably thinks you’re my daughter.’

Carrie shrugged. ‘And I could be too, easily.’

Carrie often found Heinz to be genuinely perceptive. At their second ballet together he’d said, ‘And your husband …?’

To which she’d responded, ‘I don’t ever want to talk about him.’

‘Very well.’

And they’d never spoken about him since. It was almost like, Carrie decided, Jack had never even existed.

Sydney was plaiting her hair, trying, but failing, to include the front bang-like bits into the weave so that they didn’t keep falling into her eyes. Their class was due to start at any minute. Carrie stood behind her, scowling to herself, intensely discomfited.

‘I was only saying,’ Sydney observed, still plaiting, ‘that it seems a bit strange for you not to want me to come with you when you said yourself on several occasions that there was a spare ticket going begging.’

‘There is a spare ticket,’ Carrie said, caught distinctly off her guard. ‘It’s only that next week I promised someone else …’

‘Who?’

‘A friend called Sue,’ Carrie said, too quickly, and then widened her eyes when she’d finished speaking as if the words she’d just uttered were indigestible.

‘Who?’

‘I told you about her, surely? She’s the one who thinks I should open my own interior design shop.’

‘Sue?’

‘Yes. Remember? I said I was thinking about starting work again, now that Jack’s gone. The money’s tight and everything.’

‘Interior design? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. How could you afford to open an interior design shop? You don’t know anything about retail …’

Sydney finished her plaiting and turned to face Carrie. Carrie’s cheeks were red, she noted, and she was scratching her neck as though she’d been bitten.

‘It was just an idea.’

‘Where would you get the money from to start a business with? You’re broke.’

‘I know.’

‘Interior design, you said?’

Carrie nodded.

‘Sue? Sue who?’

Carrie blinked and then swallowed. ‘The Sue who’s coming to the ballet with me next week; we were at school together. I surely must’ve mentioned her before.’

‘No.’

People had started to filter their way gradually into the gym. Carrie pointed, ‘I think the class is due to start.’

‘OK, next time.’

‘Pardon?’

Sydney smiled. ‘Next time I want to come with you, so make sure you keep the ticket spare, all right?’

‘Yes. Fine.’

Sydney led the way. Carrie looked down at her trainers and silently incanted a Hail Mary.

They’d become so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn’t noticed everyone else going back inside. Carrie was so engrossed in what Heinz was saying that she almost hadn’t noticed his hand on her shoulder. Almost.