The café in which Nathan sat was, to the naked eye, perfectly square. Its lino floor was a black-and-white check, as were, confusingly, the tiled lower halves of its otherwise off-white walls. The tables were square and topped with white Formica, giving a stiflingly uniform appearance against which streaks of ketchup and eggy breakfast remnants stood in garish relief. The chairs were cheap and flimsy and bowed when taking a larger person such as Nathan’s full weight. They were also small and made a large person feel larger, a feeling at dissonant odds with the fact that they were low and so made a person of any size feel smaller due to the resulting height of the table. Some tables were placed side by side in order to seat four. One assumed that a party of five or more would need to make their own arrangements. One table had only salt while another had only pepper. The ketchup was dispensed from a fake plastic tomato almost four times the size of an actual tomato. The salt and pepper pots were miniature people with either black or white hats depending on their contents whose blank expressions seemed eerily incongruous given the fact they were stood next to a giant and no doubt slightly threatening tomato. The café was of the cutlery-will-be-dispensed-along-with-food-and-not-before school of hospitality. There were no napkins as these were offered as a scabbard for the cutlery. Nathan’s black Nescafé had been served in a black mug. When he leaned over the mug it had the appearance of a dark vacuum into which he might fall or from which something unspeakable might emanate. At least one person in the café was staring at him. The winter sun was level with the roofs of the opposite buildings, allowing its light to stream uninterrupted through the glass door and broad window of the café, backlighting the three other patrons as they sat in relation to Nathan and causing him to squint and then blink rapidly whenever he looked up from the black hole of his coffee, leading in turn to the sensation that reality was a gauzy screen in which some nameless creature had chewed ragged holes.
Nathan’s possessions: one holdall containing three complete changes of clothes, two books and basic toiletries; a packet of rolling tobacco that also contained papers, filters and a Zippo lighter; and his wallet. The coat that had once seemed adequate was no longer sufficiently effective despite the body heat generated by the brisk three-mile walk on which Nathan had embarked because he didn’t want his parents to collect him directly from The Sanctuary and didn’t want any of The Sanctuary’s staff to drive him anywhere. He’d thought that walking to the nearest village would make him feel good. He did not feel good.
For much of Nathan’s adult life people had stared at him and as a general rule he accepted this, just as he also accepted that it was likely to occur more frequently given certain developments and alterations in his physical presentation. Keeping his coat on had not entirely concealed the tattoos and scars that crept vine-like out of his collar and sleeves. His beard was shaggy and wiry; his hair neck-length and pushed back off his face using some Brylcreem he’d borrowed from another resident. People could have surmised a lot from his eyes, he thought, if they’d been looking at his eyes.
The café was greasily steamed and smelled strongly of damp rag. Nathan had ordered a breakfast the menu described as Olympian. There were four other people there: an elderly couple with mugs of tea, dividing the Sun between them according to sections of interest; the woman who ran the place, wearing a blue tabard and a hair net and a smile that looked like she might have to sit under the drier every morning to have it set; and in the opposite corner a stubbly, thick-set man eating a bacon roll and peering at Nathan over the crest of his bap. This wasn’t how Nathan had imagined his first meal outside, but when he thought about it he realised this was partly because he hadn’t imagined much at all. He felt tired. The conditions were draining. You probably had to wash the walls in a place like this, he thought, but in a place like this that probably didn’t happen. He wondered if the café offered brown sauce and if they did what sort of symbolic dispenser it would be served in. Bap-man was chewing ostentatiously, perhaps even aggressively. The woman with the styled smile brought his breakfast and the cutlery that went with it. It was not the first time Nathan had not been trusted with cutlery outside of the circumstantially appropriate setting of a meal. The resonance of this was notable but not particularly upsetting. The newspaper couple were now doing the crossword together. Bap-man asked for another cup of tea. Nathan’s eggs were fried just to the point of congealing and no further. The sausages were of the cheap supermarket variety and contained indeterminate pieces of hard matter which he took to be bone. The bacon was not crispy. After asking, he determined that brown sauce was not an option. He’d eaten very healthily for several months and the grease was a shock and the shock was a disappointment because the anticipated emotion was happiness. He was careful to chew his food and to pay attention to what he was eating but the bone in the sausages might have been a reality too far. His coffee was hot and he burned his mouth and then experienced that sandy feeling on his tongue which would last, he expected, about a day.
When Nathan was six years old his mother had discussed with him in detail the Chambers Concise English Dictionary definition of disappointment and his exact relationship to the word with reference to his relationship to her. During his time away Nathan had at one point redefined the word sadness as plural rather than singular and now continued to think about sadness as a sort of extended family of which some members were more approachable than others. His hands had a twisted, tightened look as he ate and after a long period spent abandoning his self-consciousness he realised that he was again self-conscious. It was possible that the man with the bap was not looking at him, just as it was possible that the dimensions of the café were not in themselves unsettling, although the fact that the table and chairs were uncomfortable was certain. It was very strongly possible that he did not want his parents to arrive, although it was also true that he did not want to remain in this particular café or even this village for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. Mustard would have made the sausages more palatable but after failing to secure brown sauce he noted a certain reluctance to ask for mustard.
He finished his breakfast by using a carefully saved slice of fried bread to mop grease and egg yolk and the cooled juice of baked beans from his plate. He finished his coffee although the black void of his mug made this difficult to determine, leading to a sense of exploration when he tipped the mug towards his mouth. The sandy feeling on his tongue remained and in turn caused an itchy sweat across his cheeks. He ordered a can of Pepsi and paid using the money from his wallet which he had not thought to check but which thankfully was sufficient. A cloud moved briefly across the sun and dimmed the extent to which the other patrons were backlit and rendered the face of the man with the bap more focused and less sinister and made it clear he was not necessarily staring. A claret-coloured Rover pulled up to the kerb outside. Nathan drank all of the Pepsi and put the can on the table. He picked up his bag and put his free hand in his pocket and left the café just as his mother, neatly resplendent in a powder-blue skirt suit that sadly accentuated the arterially blown mayhem of her calves, unfolded herself from the passenger seat and opened her arms for a hug with which Nathan was only physically able to engage and so for which he could not really be said to be present.
‘Darling,’ said his mother. ‘We’ve missed you so much.’
She looked back at the car, where Nathan’s father was visible in the driver’s seat. ‘Roger,’ she said.