EXTRACT:
Vinegar Soup by Miles Gibson

Frank's first memory was the smell of food: fried eggs, bacon, potato, hamburger, hot pies, boiled soup and good, sweet tea stewed to the strength of molasses. The smell was blue and thick as smoke, it billowed beneath the ceiling, clung to the walls and rolled in hot and heavy gusts about the floor. Frank sucked at the smell and laughed. He was sitting in a nest at the bottom of a shopping basket. The nest had been made from Hazel's pajamas. The basket was hidden under a table. Frank was twelve weeks old.

Hazel had left the hospital as soon as she had found the strength to walk. The doctors had insisted that she take the child. She had called him Frank in memory of a boy she had once known who had fed her slices of marmalade cake and asked for nothing in return. The name appeared on the birth certificate but the father was marked Unknown. Hazel wanted to forget the sad, little Turk with the creaking shoes and funeral eyes. She wanted to forget Frank but Frank wouldn't go away.

For the first few weeks she sat in the attic with Frank held by suction against her breasts. She filled him with milk and watched him render it down to a soft, yellow turd. With his mouth open, gulping food, and the turd always hanging beneath him, Frank resembled a monstrous goldfish. Hazel nursed him but could not love him. She dreaded his tantrums and feared his silence. And sometimes, at night, he roared until he woke the house.

'It doesn't worry me what you do with your life,' declared the landlady one night, standing at the door and peering into the grubby room. She stared in disgust at the piles of soiled linen and the purple-faced creature struggling at its mother's breast. 'It's your life but I've got my reputation to think about. Mrs Giltrap in the room underneath has been complaining about the noise. She's nearly seventy. She deserves to rest in peace.

'I can't help it,' said Hazel, forcing her thumb into Frank's wet mouth. 'I don't know how to stop him.'

'You should have stopped him before he was born,' sniffed the landlady. 'It doesn't worry me but Mr Archer down the hall says the smell gets into his room and clings to his clothes. He says they've started to talk about him at the office.'

'What can I do?' moaned Hazel.

'I'm sorry but you'll have to make other arrangements. We can't have infants in the house. It's not natural.'

'But I can't sleep in the street,' wailed Hazel.

'Has it got a father?' inquired the landlady, nodding at the bundle of misery that kicked in Hazel's arms.

'Yes.'

'Surprise him,' suggested the landlady and slammed the door.

The next morning Hazel sat down and wrote to her mother. She had no work. She had no money. She wanted to come home. A week after she had posted the letter she wrapped Frank in a shopping basket together with his feeding bottle, birth certificate and a note of introduction. She carried her suitcase to the railway station. She left the shopping basket beneath a table at the Hercules Cafe.

Frank lay in his nest and peered up at the shadows surrounding him. The smell of food had begun to evaporate. It was growing cold. There was silence. He kicked his feet and started to cry. He was tired and frightened and hungry. And then there was the sound of a woman's voice, the shuffle of feet and a face pushed through the gloom.

Frank stopped crying and blew a bubble of pleasure. She was a young woman with a soft, round face and hair as curly as kale. Her mouth was open and she smelt of polish and soap. For some moments they stared at each other in surprise. And then the woman whistled, snatched the scrap of paper that was pinned to the basket and carried it away to the light.

Her name was Olive Ethel Bean. She owned the Hercules Cafe. She was thirty years old when she found Frank but already she moved like an old woman. Her knees were stiff and her feet never left the ground, so that when she walked she shuffled and dragged the soles from her shoes. Her father, Jumping Jack Bean, had died of the drink and left her the cafe for her twenty-third birthday and it was work, they said, that had worn her away. She started at dawn with the soup of the day and finished at night by scrubbing the floors. But some women are never young. Olive had been an old woman fresh from the womb. A pale and serious child who hoped for nothing and feared the worst.

She held the scrap of paper to the light and squinted at the scrawled message. My name is Frank. That was it. My name is Frank.

She shuffled back to the table and squatted down beside the shopping basket.

'Gilbert!' she whispered as Frank laughed and clapped his hands.

'Gilbert!' she shouted as Frank kicked and blew a string of bubbles.

Gilbert came out of the kitchen. He was wearing a rubber apron and carried a butcher's knife in his fist. 'What's wrong?' he grumbled as he sliced impatiently at the air with his knife. He was chopping chickens.

'I've found a baby.'

'What sort of baby?'

'He's called Frank,' said Olive softly as she tickled Frank's chin.

Gilbert hooked the knife into his apron and came crashing among the tables, blowing steam and muttering darkly to himself. But when he reached Olive and saw the shopping basket he was so surprised that he couldn't speak. He stood and scratched his head.

'It's a baby,' explained Olive.

'Is it dead?' he whispered.

'No.'

Gilbert picked up the shopping basket and placed it gently on the table. He peered at Frank and frowned. He sniffed. He closed one eye. He studied Frank like a man weighs a cheese.

'Perhaps we should find him something to eat,' he said at last.
 

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About Miles Gibson

Also available by Miles Gibson:
The Sandman
Dancing With Mermaids
Kingdom Swann
Mr Romance

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