Three Button Trick and Other Stories by Nicola Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

minutes, a couple she knew only to say hello to arrived and took their seats. They smiled and nodded at Carrie. She did the same in return. She then paged through her programme and pretended that she wasn’t overhearing their conversation about the kind of conservatory they should build on to the back of their house. He wanted a big one that could fit a table to seat at least six. She wanted a small, bright retreat full of orchids and tomato plants.
    Carrie kept reading and rereading the names of the principal dancers. The orchestra’s preparatory honking and parping jangled in her throat and with her nerves. She closed her eyes. I will count to ten. One, two, three, four …
    â€˜Ooof ! Here we go, here we go!’
    Heinz, squeezing his way over to his seat, pushing his considerable bulk between the two rows of chairs.
    â€˜Oi! Hup! There we are.’
    Carrie opened her eyes and stared at him. He had a box of chocolate brazils in one hand and a bulging Selfridges bag in the other, which he almost, but couldn’t quite, fit into the gap between his knees and the front of the box.
    Carrie’s gut rumbled her antipathy. He smelled, always—as Jack had noted on many an occasion—of wine gums and Deep Heat. An old smell. He must have been in his eighties, wore a grey-brown toupee and weighed in, she guessed, like a prize bull, at around three hundred and twenty pounds.
    Carrie converted this weight into stone and then back again to occupy herself.
    Heinz nodded at her. She nodded back. He always wore a sludge-coloured bow tie. It hung like a shiny little brown turd, poised under his chin.
    Heinz endeavoured, with a great harrumphing, to find adequate room by his knees for his bag. ‘Uh-oh! Uh-oh!’
    Carrie gritted her teeth.
    â€˜If you haven’t room for your shopping, this chair is empty.’ She indicated Jack’s empty seat which separated them.
    â€˜Empty? Really? That lovely man of yours isn’t with you tonight? Empty, you say?’ He wheezed as he spoke, like an asthmatic Persian feline, which made his German accent even more pronounced.
    You’d think, Carrie speculated, that a wheeze would take the hard edges off a German accent, but you’d be wrong to think so.
    â€˜Would you mind’—close to her ear—‘if I sat next to you and put my bag on the other seat?’
    My God! Carrie thought, fixing her eyes on the stage curtains and breathing a sigh of relief at their preliminary twitchings.
    â€˜Brazil?’
    Ten minutes in, Heinz was whispering to her.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Brazil? Go on. Have one.’
    â€˜No, thank you.’
    â€˜Go on!’
    â€˜No. I don’t actually like brazils. Nuts give me hives.’
    Heinz closed the box and rested it on his lap.
    During the intermission, Heinz regaled Carrie with tales about the relative exclusivity of the Turner and Booker prizes. He liked the opera, it turned out, especially Mozart. He found camomile tea to be excellent for sleeplessness. He was a widower of seven years.
    Carrie noticed how the box’s other regulars smiled at her sympathetically whenever they caught her eye. It was odd, really, because actually, with increased acquaintance, Heinz wasn’t all that bad. In fact, if anything, he’d made her the centre of attention in the box. The focus, the axis. She felt rather like Princess Margaret opening a day care centre in Fulham.
    As the safety curtain rose for the second half, Heinz was telling Carrie how he’d just been to Selfridges to buy a cappuccino maker. He loved everything Italian. He’d been stationed there during the war.
    As the stage curtains closed, Heinz mopped something from the corner of his eye and muttered gutturally, ‘Poor, poor old Petrushka!’
    During the curtain calls Heinz told Carrie that he often felt that it was sadder to be a sad puppet than a sad person.
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜Petrushka, the puppet. Sometimes