Songs from the Violet Cafe Read Online Free

slender thread of his neck, one hand curled over the edge of the blanket wrapped around him. Hugo thought he saw a resemblance between them, but perhaps it was his overheated imagination.
    ‘Moses in the bulrushes,’ she said, pulling a face.
    ‘Violet, this is Ming,’ he said, as his wife advanced on them. Ming had drawn herself up to her full five feet. She glared hard at the woman, almost causing her to turn away.
    ‘You’ve told her?’ Violet said, when Ming didn’t respond to the introduction.
    ‘You have to speak loud,’ Ming said in a scornful voice.
    ‘I haven’t asked her,’ he said, humbled.
    ‘We have enough children here,’ said Ming.
    ‘What a hell of a place to live,’ the woman said, offering up the child. Ming held her arms by her side. ‘Why here?’
    ‘Because of the war,’ Ming said, before he could answer. ‘They think I am Japanese woman.’ She held the other woman’s eye steadily. ‘Japanese, phoo. They know nothing here, they think everyone looks the same.’
    He was taken aback, hearing this blunt statement of the necessity of their lives. Ming had never spoken of her need to be invisible. Sometimes he wondered whether she was even aware of it. Already, he thought, things are changed.
    ‘You will come into our house, please,’ Ming said to their visitor.
    ‘I don’t want to stay,’ said the woman. She spoke to Ming more loudly than was necessary, as if it was she who was hard of hearing, then flushed when she realised what she had done. She tried to speak more evenly. ‘I’ve come to bring the boy. His name is Wing Lee.’
    ‘Your baby?
    ‘My friend’s child. I’ve told your husband, he knows about him.’ Despite her determination, her voice had begun to rise in a shrill and frantic way. ‘Take him quickly. I can’t stay. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get here but the ship was holed on the way out from England, it was terrible, it was taking water and we were going for the lifeboats but the captain told us to hold on harder, and we were rescued. We slept on the deck of a dirty little steamer that took weeks to get here. I can’t tell you how bad it’s been.’
    ‘I think this is your child.’ Ming’s words were flat and unfriendly.
    ‘As I said. My friend’s child. I can’t keep him in London, there are bombs falling all the time, and my daughter’s gone to the country.’
    ‘So. You have a child already?’
    ‘A girl of my own. Yes.’
    ‘But this child. He is a Chinese baby, like my youngest one, a little Chinese, a little not Chinese.’
    ‘His mother is dead, she was killed by the bombs. Whoosh. Boom.’
    ‘There’s no need for that,’ said Hugo sharply. ‘She understands what a bomb is.’
    The woman coloured again. ‘I’m sorry, Hugo.’
    ‘So,’ Ming said, ‘you can come many miles far, but you cannot keep your friend’s child. You’d better come inside now.’
    Hugo lifted Wing Lee out of the woman’s arms, although for a moment the child fought him, clinging to Violet. When he had prised him away, Hugo cradled his head against his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Violet, ‘but you see how it is. There’s a way it must be done. She won’t just take him in.’
    ‘Not even if you tell her to?’
    He allowed himself a smile. ‘Things are all very equal here.’
    ‘A modern household. Well, it’s not what I expected.’
    They followed Ming into the house.
     
    Don’t go, he had said when Violet prepared to leave, the day after Magda’s funeral. I need you here. When he thought about it now, he was ashamed of that weak moment of longing. Looking back, he thought how piteous he must have sounded. All the same, he had pleaded with her. I know it’s not right with Magda just gone but, well, you know how it is, a fellow gets lonely on his own. When she was silent, he’d said, you feel it too, I can tell. They were sitting in the bay window of the small bungalow he rented in Ponsonby, looking out on a clutter of