60
The Green Hills of Cricklewood

You know how it is early in the morning, after you have done the thing with the toothbrush and the razor and you look out the window and it is not raining any more the way it was raining before it stopped, and there is just this mist coming off the sidewalk, now?

I squinted up at the sun which was making the mist do what mists do, and I thought: this is one of the days when you do not start work right away, this is one of the days when you walk up the street, past the old one who is bringing the milk and the young one who is carrying the mail and the tiny one who is pushing newspapers through those holes they have in the doors for pushing newspapers through, and you walk on up to where your street joins the big wide one called Finchley Road, because that is where the place is that is cleaning your trousers, and it is a good day to collect your trousers, before you start work.

But when I got to the big wide one, I noticed that something was not the way it had been before. I noticed this because I had to wait to cross to where the trousers were, on account of the big red buses and the heavy trucks that were driving between me and the place with the trousers and I knew it was not a good time to do the running with the traffic. You could get a wound, down there. These are things you learn. I remembered the time in Pamplona, when I was younger than I am now and had not learned those things, and a cab ran over my suitcase, and the suitcase was never the same, after that. So I waited, which was how I noticed what it was that wasn’t the way it was before. There was a new café there, where there used to be a greengrocery.

The café was called Papa’s.

When I finally crossed over to the place where the trousers were I said to the cleaning one: ‘I see there is a new café here.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It has been here a week, now. They could not get this stain out. They have done a note. They say it is oil.’

‘They are right,’ I said. ‘It is the oil of the mower. If I ask for the Special Treatment they offer in the window, will it come out?’

The cleaning one shrugged. ‘Who can say?’ he said.

I left the trousers with him anyway, and I crossed the road again, and I looked through the window into Papa’s. It had a red tiled floor and round white marble-topped tables and black iron chairs and an electric fan in the ceiling, and I thought: I know why they have called it Papa’s, and I went in and sat down.

A waitress came up. She was one of the slim ones, with the big dark eyes they have, if you are lucky.

‘Welcome to Cricklewood,’ I said. It is the kind of thing you say, if you have known a lot of women, over the years. ‘It is good to see a café dedicated to Hemingway.’

‘I’m sorry?’ she said.

I smiled. She was very young.

‘The owner of this café would understand,’ I said, but gently. ‘Ernest Hemingway was a writer. He was one of the best writers there was. People called him Papa. He used to sit in cafés just like this, in the days before Paris was the way it is now. The cafés were called the Dome and Les Deux Magots and stuff like that, and they had red tiled floors, too, and white marble tables and black iron chairs and electric fans, and Papa would sit there writing in this ring-backed notebook he had, while the little saucers piled up in front of him.’

‘Does he still do it?’ she said.

I looked away. I did not want to tell her it was thirty years since he had put the shotgun in his mouth.

‘Ask your boss,’ I said. ‘He knows about all that.’

She did the thing with the cloth that makes tables shine.

‘My boss is my dad,’ she said. ‘That is why we called it Papa’s.’

I picked up the menu, after that. There were a lot of breakfasts on it.

‘I’ll have the one with the eggs and the bacon and the tomatoes,’ I said. ‘The Number Four.’

‘Is that the one with the fried bread as well?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that is the one it is.’