‘There’s no one here.’
‘It’s not for the no one who’s not here.’
By the time I’ve tried to untangle that riddle of a sentence, he’s returned to the shop floor and he puts a mug on the counter in front of me.
‘Oh. Thanks.’ I hadn’t realised he was making tea for me and I feel guilty for being so hard on him, although my benevolent feelings don’t last long when he opens the display case and helps himself to a red velvet cupcake. ‘Oi!’
‘I’m making them look popular.’ A dimple dents only his left cheek as he gives me a grin and bites into the cake, and then lifts his mug to cover his mouth and carries on talking. ‘Think of how many people will come in and go “they’re going fast, they must be really good, I’ll have to try one of those!”’
‘That’s not how it works,’ I huff in annoyance. Eating the stock before opening time does not equate with his aforementioned promise of not knowing he’s here.
He swallows the mouthful and slurps down more tea. ‘Look, there’s no point in working in a tearoom if I can’t have tea and cake for breakfast. You can always nip home and make more if we run out.’
No. No, I can’t. But I can’t tell him that, of course.
‘Ooh, that’s nice,’ he says after another mouthful. ‘That tastes like—’
‘It doesn’t taste like anything. It’s original.’ Knowing my luck, he will have eaten those cupcakes from the supermarket before and will recognise the taste.
He raises both eyebrows at the tone in my voice, and finishes the rest of the cupcake in merciful silence, and guilt needles at me for being too harsh. The last thing I needed was someone taste-testing the stock, and my fear of being found out is growing by the minute. How could I ever explain to someone that I’ve forgotten how to bake? How could I expect anyone to understand that I don’t have a kitchen to even be able to try?
He downs the last of his tea at the same time as I finish the last apple rose, sprinkle the custard tart with glitter and put it into the display case, closing the door with a pointed click in case he gets any ideas about eating more of my limited stock.
‘Nearly opening time.’ He looks around the clocks on the wall. ‘Well, by three of the clocks anyway. They don’t all agree. You know what they say – a person with one clock knows the time, a person with seventy-two is always late.’
‘I don’t think anyone’s ever said that.’
‘Well, I like to be different.’ He does that happy shrug again. ‘You want to do the honours?’
He’s standing by the door, inviting me to open it, and I can’t help thinking that it’s quite considerate to let me open the doors on the first day. I just hope it’s the first of many.
4
Far from hordes of Gryphons and Mock Turtles waiting outside at opening time, customers have been trickling in over the course of the morning. It started off with a couple of old ladies wanting hot buttered toast and being quite alarmed at the changes since the last time they were here, then came harried parents having dropped kids off at school, and curious people who had seen my Cheshire Cat advertising signs or heard about The Wonderland Teapot in other ways. I didn’t expect to be fending off armies of customers clamouring for tea, and for a first morning, the shop hasn’t been empty once, although it hasn’t been full either.
A couple come in with a young boy, probably around the age of four. He’s got eyes that are red from crying and a frowny face that looks like he might be mid-tantrum, but from the moment they open the door, he can’t take his eyes off Bram. The parents order sandwiches, and the young lad jabs angrily at a cupcake in the display unit, and Bram notices the extra attention. They sit down as I make their cheese and ham sandwiches, and he goes over to introduce himself. The boy stares at him in awe, and Bram kneels on the floor to be at the same height, shaking the boy’s hand, keeping up a constant conversation, flitting between talking to the kid and the adults with ease. When I’ve put their sandwiches on a tray and added the pot of tea they ordered, he scrambles up and comes to get it with a conspiratorial wink.
He carries the tray over and unloads the teapot, cups, and sandwiches onto the table, but when he gets to the little boy’s cake, his hands move so fast that I barely see them move at all, but the plate he puts down is empty. The boy stares at it open-mouthed and then at Bram, who matches his open-mouthed shock.
‘You’ve eaten it already!’ It’s his squeakyish Hatter voice again, the one that sounds childlike and unthreatening.
‘You!’ The boy points at Bram, clearly knowing he’s done something with the cake.
‘It was right there!’ Bram consults the parents. ‘You saw it, right?’
The parents play along and Bram scratches his head. Well, his hat. ‘Now, where could it have gone?’ He looks around the tearoom like someone might’ve taken it. ‘If you haven’t eaten it, maybe the White Rabbit took it? Did anyone see a Mad March Hare running off with it?’
He kneels down again. ‘Oh no, wait, I can see exactly where it’s gone.’ He reaches behind the boy’s head and extracts the cake, seemingly from behind his ear. A trick as old as time, but usually completed with a fifty-pence piece rather than baked goods. ‘Now why did you put it behind there?’
The boy clutches his fingers for it, and Bram goes to hand it to him and then pulls it away again. ‘Maybe the cake doesn’t want to be eaten! Maybe it’s going to disappear again!’ He waves a hand between the cake and the boy, and sure enough, the cake disappears. I mean, it doesn’t really disappear, but I can’t work out where he’s stashed it.
The boy gasps in surprise, laughing with glee, his tantrum long forgotten. ‘Again!’
This time Bram does another hand movement and the cake reappears on his palm, and the boy is rigid with sheer delight, and squeals joyfully when Bram waves his hand and makes the cake disappear yet again. I have never seen anyone move their hands so fast.
Bram stands up and looks around, like he’s looking for the missing cake, and then he spots it again, and kneels to extract it from behind the boy’s ear again. ‘Now it’s behind the other ear! You’ve got to stop hiding food round there, you know. You’ll have columns of ants following you everywhere you go. Look, here comes one now!’
He points to an invisible something on the floor and when the boy looks, he removes the cake again, twirls around behind him, and replaces it from the other side. Once the cake is safely on the plate in front of him, Bram bows and tips his hats to the family, but the lad is far more interested in Bram himself. The parents invite him to sit, which he does, and makes easy conversation for a few minutes. He takes the stack of hats off and messes his hair up, making it even crazier than it was anyway, and dipping his head to let the curious boy touch his blue hair.
The dad takes a photo of them together, and when they leave, the boy runs back and hugs Bram, and as they walk away, he’s waving all the way down the street until they get out of sight, and Bram waves back from the doorway.
My elbows hurting makes me I realise I’ve been leaning on the counter, mesmerised by the scene in front of me. I can feel my heart melting. I couldn’t have done that. My Alice costume didn’t even register on the young lad’s radar, but Bram captured his imagination from the first moment. He gave him his full undivided attention and did exactly what was needed to turn his frown upside down.
And Bram kind of… came to life. For someone so colourful, when he was entertaining that little lad, he lit up brighter than a planet in the night sky.
He comes back inside and starts clearing the table without being asked.
‘You’re very good at that.’ It feels like the first nice thing I’ve said to him all morning.
‘Clearing tables?’
‘No.’ I glance at the empty cups and plates he’s loading onto a tray. ‘Well, that too, but I’m not sure that’s much of an acquired skill. What you just did. Doing magic. Entertaining kids.’ He’s done a couple of card tricks for other customers so far this morning, but nothing like that. ‘You knew exactly what that lad needed.’
‘Was that a compliment?’ he asks without looking up.
Usually, when faced with a question like that, my natural instinct is to say something sarcastic and turn it into a joke, but I decide to stand by it. ‘Yes, it was. That little boy loved you.’
‘Just trying to make someone’s day a bit brighter. If you can make someone smile when they otherwise wouldn’t have smiled then that’s a day well spent. Doesn’t matter if they’re four or eighty-four – everyone needs a smile sometimes.’ It’s his normal voice again. In a few short hours, I’ve noticed the difference between how he speaks when he’s in character and how he speaks when he isn’t.
