Joe and Dianne Through The Looking Glass

Chapter 4 - American Smooth Week

It was the following week she saw them next. Unusually, this time it was him who turned up first. He surprised her that morning – it had been unusually quiet and Alice had taken the opportunity to sneak a read of her current book, always carried in her bag just in case. Reading was a necessity, like breathing, for Alice. Books had always been a constant in her life and it was an unusual day indeed when she didn't read at least a couple of chapters. No matter what she was going through a good book could always transport her away. It didn't matter if she had been reading for five minutes or five hours, once she got her nose inside a book the world outside shrank away until it only existed on the margins of her consciousness. It had always been that way for her since childhood. She had constantly been in trouble when she was young for reading in inconvenient places such as sitting on the stairs or once in the narrow gangway of a boat. At school her friends had to nudge her when the teacher asked everyone to put their books away as she was quite capable of continuing reading, totally oblivious of the instruction, until the teacher snatched the book from her hand in desperation. She had read on the morning of her wedding, sitting in her underwear while her sister brushed and styled her hair, she had read through the pain of early labour and, whilst others had complained about the torture of night time baby feeds, she had relished the opportunity to sit in silence, cradling her newborn and reading by the glow of a night light. When the children were older she had read through endless play practices and netball matches and later had read outside houses, huddled into her coat in a cold car on late night teenage party pick up runs. Those last few days of vigil at Matthew's bedside she had returned to old favourites from long into her past, using books as a comfort blanket to block out the creeping finality of death. Now that she was on her own books were her companions – friends who she could laugh and cry with, available even in the middle of sleepless nights.

So engrossed was she in her book that it wasn't until he began to move the chairs about in the café that she realised he was there at all. She looked up enquiringly, hastily slipping her book under the counter. She was beginning to expect the unexpected from him by now so finding him scrabbling around under their usual table, strange camera in his hand and talking to himself again did not astound her as much as it would have done a few weeks ago. She was growing fond of the pair of them and the boys almost childlike delight in whatever strange stunt he was up to now did nothing to dampen the feeling that there was something special about the two of them. He was now huddled right underneath the table - chairs pulled in around him like a cage – quite a feat considering the table was barely big enough to hold two cups and small plates. He looked up and caught her eye, put his finger to his lips and winked, reminding her with a pang of Robert at the age of five or six drawing her into his endless attempts to make Karen jump by hiding behind doors. Plainly a similar surprise was in store for his red haired friend when she arrived and he must be intending to capture it on film as he was now making the same hushing gesture towards the lens of the camera. He did look laughable folded up like a jack-in-the-box under the table and Alice was just beginning to worry that he would develop DVT before his graceful friend arrived when the girl pushed open the café door. Alice was pleased to see that the tears of the previous week were nowhere to be seen and the red head looked her usual bubbly self. The girl was oblivious to her companion's strange behaviour and walked up to the till to order and pay for their regular morning drinks. Alice placed the cups on the counter and a moment passed between the two of them as the girl looked directly at her and smiled, it was – or so it seemed to Alice – something more than the usual polite half smile one might produce for a stranger, an acknowledgement perhaps in that fleeting expression that a connection had been made; that they had been brought closer through Alice's witness of last week's upset and that there now existed a fragile bond of trust between them.

The girl turned and walked over to the table, placing the drinks down carefully and attempting to pull out her chair. Crouched under the table, a grin reaching from ear to ear, one hand holding out his camera and the other grasping the chair firmly, the boy hung on and resisted her attempts to move it. She pulled again, more firmly this time, before bending down to investigate why the chair wasn't budging. With a loud and slightly unsettling noise he lent forward, camera in front of him, to meet her face to face as she bent down. The girl squealed in surprise, recoiling back and running a few steps in automatic flight before turning back to laughingly berate him for the shock he had given her. Joining in her laughter with his own chuckle, he scrambled out from under the table and unfolded himself. Standing beside her now he reached out an arm and flung it affectionately around her shoulder pulling her closer into his body as he held the camera out in front of them. Alice watched the pair of them giggling together, first talking to each other and then addressing the camera as if it was a third person in their shared conversation. It was distinctly odd behaviour she mused. Alice had by now recognised that the boy with his strange looking camera must be filming a video of some kind but quite why he should be engaged in this activity was beyond her. She knew enough about films to know that they required cameramen, overhead microphones, sets and scripts and as far as she could tell this strange, smiling boy had none of these. Aside from this, what he seemed to film could not surely be either interesting or in any way ascetically pleasing – this morning was a case in point – if she was right he had just filmed a good five minutes of himself sitting under a table. It had looked odd enough from Alice's viewpoint but the camera must have captured something even more bizarre. Alice knew from experience how easy it was to take a picture of your own finger, the boy must have been in danger of recording footage obscured by his own knee and surely his face would have been much too close to the camera? Perhaps it's some kind of diary she thought, a record of his life. But what does he do with it all? No-one would ever want to watch a video of someone else's life. It seemed such a waste of time and effort and yet the boy appeared to enjoy it and had even persuaded his friend to take cheerful part in his scheme. It was a mystery.