Jade had watched them drive off. Josse and Adelphine and all the residents of the impasse who frequented the tavern, plus a few people she’d never seen. Most of the usual bar staff seemed to have disappeared as well. So much so that she had been roped in to help out.
She wondered what was going on, as she stood polishing the brass taps. She had long since worked out that the residents of the alley all knew each other. That Josse, Adelphine and all the Zinneke dogs also seemed to live there; she had occasionally seen them through the gate at the entrance. That the gate never opened for outsiders, or not so she’d noticed.
There seemed to be a café of some sort in the warehouse at the back of the alley. She had seen people go in and out, and sometimes they seemed to have gatherings. She had also noticed residents queueing up at mealtimes to fetch food from a building inside the alley. The one next to Jos Le Rêveur. Adelphine appeared to serve them from the tavern kitchen, through a hatch in the party wall hidden behind a closed door.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she remarked to Zina, who was lolling in a corner.
As usual, Zina kept her own counsel.
And so did Mirko, when she tried to pump him for information. He was one of only two regular waiters who had stayed behind, and he wasn’t saying anything. That said, he said nothing in a way that clearly indicated there might have been something to say.
All he did mention was that she’d missed a spot. After he’d checked that she was still wearing the silver cross.
***
It was a shame that Romeo appeared to have left with the others. She’d been looking forward to an evening of rejecting his playful advances, but with throngs of thirsty customers clamouring for drinks she was soon far too busy to miss the waiter with the captivating tattoos.
Not that there’d have been much chance of flirty banter anyway. Mirko didn’t like Romeo chatting her up for some reason, and Zac the barista wasn’t her type.
***
Nor was Mirko too keen on her taking Zina for a late evening walk, six hours on when they were finally ready to lock up. It had been an exhausting first experience of bar work for her, even if the two men hadn’t let her attempt anything tricky – Mirko took the orders and served the punters, Zac prepared all the drinks.
Jade had been asked to clear glasses, wipe tables and generally make herself useful. To her surprise, Ladrache had also helped out, lending a hand whenever he could do so unnoticed. The first time a bucket of water, a sponge and a pair of rubber gloves somehow appeared out of nowhere right where she’d only just found a spill to clean up, she had found it unsettling, but the unease quickly passed. After all, why look an invisible gift horse in the mouth?
***
“If you really insist on that walk, I’m going with you.”
“You do know I somehow survived without you before, don’t you?”
“I know. I’m not saying you can’t cope on your own.” Well, he did have his doubts – life in the streets didn’t favour anyone in the long run, for all he knew, but would it be wise to say so out loud?
“This is different, though,” he insisted instead.
“Oh, of course, I forgot,” Jade replied, clutching the spray bottle in her pocket just that little bit tighter. “Those thugs Jay’nAye warned us about. I don’t see any. Do you?”
Both the impasse and the street lay empty under the full moon; everything looked perfectly peaceful. Even the bats seemed to have deserted the alley; the colony that appeared to roost in the warehouse attic was usually quite active.
“The fact that you don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there. Humour me, please. Just a few more days and they’ll be gone.”
***
A mere hour later, she had curled up under her duvet half asleep, her bedroom door safely locked, her mind blissfully drifting.
That threshold to dreamland when your inner self gets to do its own thinking, unfettered by the restraints of rationality.
The necklace. The bats. The warning not to ask anyone in.
A man with pointy eye teeth who never stood in the sun. Who, come to think of it, seemed to live mostly at night.
Her eyes popped open. Suddenly she was again wide awake, her conscious mind back in charge.
Don’t be silly. Of course not. OK, go double-check that the windows are closed if you really can’t help yourself, but then go back to sleep.
***
By late morning the following day, everyone appeared to have returned to the alley. A table of thirty-somethings was teasing a pinkish young man who for some reason wasn’t allowed a hot chocolate. Josse was reading the paper in his favourite booth, a double espresso cooling by his side.
He waved Jade over when he saw her come in.
“Thank you for pitching in yesterday. Mirko and Zac said you were a great help.”
“No problem. Actually, where had you all disappeared to?”
“I’m sorry I’ve not had much time to sit down with you lately. Do you have a minute now?”
“Sure,” she replied warily, sliding onto the opposite bench.
“I was wondering if you’d had a chance to think about what you’d like to do next.”
“Are you telling me that it’s time to move on?”
“No. You’re welcome here, as I keep saying. I just think that, eventually, when you’re ready, you might think about building a life for yourself. We can give you a job here if you want one, but you may have other plans.”
She just glared at him. He knew he should have left this conversation for Adelphine… Somehow, their lodger didn’t seem to take offence at the older woman’s bluntness. How was it that he was always meant to find the right words?
“For example. I know that you check in on your friends at the underpass once in a while. That you take them food from the kitchen.”
“Adelphine said it was OK,” Jade bristled. “It’s only leftovers; she always makes far too much. I’m not stealing from you, and I can’t believe that you’d prefer to throw the food away.”
“I don’t! You’re wholeheartedly welcome to it.” He very much doubted Adelphine would prepare more food than the residents needed; they’d been through some very hard times. If there was plenty to share, she had planned it that way.
“All I’m saying is that handouts alone, crucial as they are, may not be the most effective way to help your friends in the long run,” he continued. “Wouldn’t it be better if you could also play a part in tackling the root of the problem?”
“And how do you suggest I do that?” She wasn’t sure why she was being so rude. This weird ageing hippie with his crazy-mad hair had shown her nothing but kindness. And yet, all this bitterness had begun to bubble up inside, a surge of hot bile that she couldn’t keep down.
“If that’s a path you want to take, you could think about the skills you could bring to the challenge. Maybe you’d like to train as a social worker, or go into politics. Or study medicine. Work for an NGO. Raise funds for a relevant cause. There are lots of possibilities.”
“You’ve got to be joking. There’s no way I could do any of that; that’s all way out of reach.”
“We would do our best to help you.”
“Dream on. Even if I did manage to get the training and the right kind of job, that’s just a losing battle. The system is rigged and there’s nothing anyone can do about it; this is the real world, not some do-gooder fantasy.”
She stopped briefly for breath, then went in for the kill.
“I mean, what do people like you know about anything anyway?”
Six centuries. One wife lost giving birth, another to the plague, a third claimed by the cannons of whichever war it happened to be. Revolutions, invasions, oppression; floods, fires, famines. An endless succession of hardship and loss; five children outlived, their own offspring long since untraceable.
All those loved ones long gone, all the friends who had fallen by the wayside. All that grief to work through, again and again. All the hope and the solace found, again and again, by reaching out to other lost misfits and fostering a community that made room for them all.
And yet, what indeed did he know about anything.
“Not nearly enough,” he replied. “Why don’t you tell me?”