William Trevor - Cheating at Canasta

‘No, you take it,’ he said when she had to explain she hadn’t any money, and in the end she took the two-pound coin he gave to where they broke it down for her. He picked up a necklace for her with the grab, guiding the grab skilfully, knowing when to open the metal teeth and knowing not to be in a hurry to close them, to wait until he was certain. He’d cleared out everything there was on offer once, he said—sweets, jewellery, dice, three packs of cards, two penknives, the dancing doll, a Minnie Mouse, ornaments. He swivelled the crane about when he got the necklace for her, asking her what she wanted next, but this time the teeth closed an instant too soon and the bangle he’d gone after moved only slightly and then slipped back. They spent an hour in the Gold Mine.

‘Go back to the bus station for a while?’ he suggested, and Jasmin said she didn’t mind. But on the way there were some seats, one on each side of a small concrete space with a concrete trough of shrubs in the middle. The shrubs were mostly dead, but one of the seats was empty and he asked her if she’d like to sit there.

‘Yeah, it’s nice,’ Jasmin said.

An elderly man, asleep, was stretched out on the seat opposite the empty one. On another, a mother and her children were eating chips. On the third two women, in silence, stared at nothing.

‘I come here when it’s sunny,’ the man Jasmin was with said. ‘Nothing better to do, I come here.’

He’d made her wear the necklace, putting it on for her, the tips of his fingers cool on her neck as he fiddled with the clasp. He’d said it suited her. It suited her eyes, he’d said, and she wondered about that, the beads being yellowish. When they’d been going towards the machine that took you to the stars he’d said he was twenty-nine and she’d wanted to say she liked his being older, and almost did.

‘The sun all right for you, Jasmin?’

The two women looked at them, one and then the other, still not speaking. The mother scolded her children when they asked for more chips. She bundled the empty cartons into a wastebin and they went away.

‘There’s vitamins in the sun. You know that, Jasmin?’

She nodded, although she hadn’t been aware of this. She tried to look at her necklace but she couldn’t see it properly when she pulled it taut and squinted down at the beads. If she’d been alone she would have taken it off, but she didn’t like to do that now.

‘Jasmin’s a great name,’ he said. On the chat line he had said that, complimenting her, although he didn’t know she had given herself the name. She’d often thought he was affectionate when they had their conversations on the chat line, even though she’d been puzzled a few times when he described the telephone box he was in or read out what was written on a wall. The first time he’d read something out without saying he was doing it she’d wondered if he was all there in the head, but then he explained and it was all right. She imagined him in the courts, like you’d see on TV. She imagined him standing up with papers in one hand, putting a case. She imagined him looking to where she was watching, and his smile coming on, and wanting to wave at him but knowing she mustn’t because he’d have told her that. The first time on the chat line he’d commented on her voice. ‘You take it easy now,’ he’d said, and she hung on because she didn’t want him to go. ‘Love that voice,’ he said, and she realized he meant hers.

He was smiling at her now and they watched the sleeping man waking up. He had made a pillow of a plastic carrier-bag stuffed full of what might have been clothes. He had undone his shoelaces and he did them up again. He looked about him and then he went away.

‘I thought you might say no, Jasmin, when I put it to you we’d meet up. Know what I mean, Jasmin? That you wouldn’t want to take it further.’

She shook her head, denying that. She wanted her mother to go by, coming back from the betting shop, where the man Holby didn’t know about worked. Holby was pathetic, her mother said, another mistake she’d made, same’s the one with Jasmin’s father. She had got into a relationship with the betting-shop man and the next thing would be he’d be a mistake too, no way he wouldn’t.

‘I’d never,’ Jasmin heard herself protesting. ‘I’d never have said no.’

She shook her head to make certain he was reassured. He’d lowered his voice when he’d said he had worried in case she’d say no. She didn’t want anything spoiled; she wanted everything to go on being as good as on the chat line, as good as it was now.

‘You at a loose end, Jasmin? You got the time today, come round to my place?’

Again there was the ripple of excitement. She could feel it all over her body, a fluttering of pins and needles it almost felt like but she knew it wasn’t that. She loved being with him; she’d known she would. ‘Yeah,’ she said, not hesitating, not wanting him to think she had. ‘Yeah, I got the time today.’

‘Best to walk,’ he said. ‘All right with a walk, Jasmin?’

‘Course I am.’ And because it seemed to belong now, Jasmin added that she didn’t know his name.

‘Clive,’ he said.

He liked that name and often gave it. Usually they asked, sometimes even on the chat line, before they got going. Rodney he liked too. Ken he liked. And Alistair.

‘I never knew a Clive,’ she said.

‘You’re living at home, Jasmin?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You said. A bit ago you said that. I only wondered if you’d moved out by now.’

‘I wish I’d be able to.’

‘Arm’s length, are they?’

She didn’t understand and he said her mother and whoever. On the chat line he remembered she’d said she was an only child. Her mother she’d mentioned then, the man she’d referred to in the bus station. He asked about him, wondering if he was West Indian, and she said yes. Light-coloured, she said. ‘He passes.’

They had turned out of the busy streets, into Blenheim Row, leading to Sowell Street, where the lavatories were, the school at the end.

‘A West Indian kid got killed here,’ he said. ‘White kids took their knives out. You ever see a thing like that, Jasmin?’

‘No.’ Vehemently, she shook her head, and he laughed and then she did.

‘You ever think of moving out, Jasmin? Anything like that come into your thoughts? Get a place of your own?’

All the time, she said. The only thing was, she wasn’t earning.

‘First thing you said to me nearly, that you’d got nothing coming in.’

‘You’re easy to talk with, Clive.’

He took her hand; she didn’t object. Her fingernails were silvery he’d noticed in the McDonald’s, a couple of them jagged where they’d broken. No way she wasn’t a child, no way she’d reached sixteen, more like twelve. Her hand was warm, lying there in his, dampish, fingers interlaced with his.

‘There used to be a song,’ he said. “‘Putting on the agony” was how it went. “Putting on the style”. Before your time, Jas. It could have been called something else, only those were the words. “That’s what all the young folk are doin’ all the while”. Lovely song.’

‘Maybe I heard it one time, I don’t know.’

‘What age really, Jas?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘No, really though?’

She said fifteen. Sixteen in October, she said.

When they were passing the Queen and Angel he asked her if she ever took a drink. It wouldn’t do for him to bring her on to licensed premises, he explained, and she said she wasn’t fussy for a drink, remembering the taste of beer, which she hadn’t liked. He said to wait and he went to an off-licence across the street and came back with a plastic bag. He winked at her and she laughed. ‘Mustn’t be bad boys,’ he said. ‘No more than a few sips.’