Yearn: Tales of Lust and Longing

It was now five a.m. and Eddy knew his father would already be setting up his stall. They walked down to Berwick Street Market. Larry Jenkins, dressed in an old pullover that Eddy recognized from years earlier, stood with his back to them, unpacking fish from freezer boxes onto his stand. A small radio propped up on a nearby milk crate gave the track running order for the races later that day, while down the lane all the other stalls were setting up, the owners bantering and teasing each other while unloading boxes, fruit, flowers, and cheese: it was a rapport so familiar that they didn’t even bother to turn their heads toward the object of their ridicule. The humorous exchanges flew above their heads like errant darts as Eddy and Janey wove their way along the street, dodging handcarts and barrels, toward the fish stall.

“Dad!” Eddy cried out. Larry Jenkins swung around. Smoking and hard work had aged him a great deal since the last time Eddy had seen him, and for the first time he became aware of his father’s frailty. He felt a pang of guilt, as he hadn’t visited him in over a year, yet he walked past Berwick Street Market every day on his way to work.

“Eddy!” Larry Jenkins spun around to the other stall owners. “See, Shirley, me boy ’as come to visit me!”

Shirley, a plump, dyed redhead who owned the flower stall next to his father’s, waddled over, her gaudy makeup unchanged since the 1980s.

“Eddy? My handsome lover Eddy?” she crackled. Pushing past Janey, she pulled him into a hug, her powdery perfume sending him back decades. “’Asn’t he grown—he looks proper smart. Oh, Larry, you must be proud.”

“Course I am, Shirley, course I am—when I get to see the cocky bastard. Come ’ere, lad.” And he pulled Eddy into a pungent embrace of fish and tobacco emanating from his fishmonger’s apron. Eddy pulled back, overwhelmed.

“We’d thought you might ’ave set up so we could ’ave breakfast wiv you—you know, the usual?”

“My pleasure, lad.” Larry winked at Janey. “You know Eddy, a right elitist bugger he’s become, but occasionally he likes to slum it wiv his old dad, like the good old days.”

“I remember, Mr. Jenkins,” she replied, smiling.

Taken aback, he studied her. “’Old on, I know you. . . .”

“It’s Janey Lewis, Dad—you know, my old school friend . . .”

“Janey! Why so it is! Tell you wot, girl, you broke my lad’s ’eart, you did.”

“I did?”

“Dad!” Eddy tried to shut him up, but Larry Jenkins would not be deterred.

“Gave it all up after that. Could ’ave gone to university, that boy. First in the family, could ’ave done something for society. Instead off he went and become a capitalist, a bloody paid-up member of the Tory party.”

Aghast, Janey turned to Eddy. “Is that true, Eddy, you ran away because of me?” He could not meet her eye, instead turning back to his father.

“C’mon, off your soapbox, we’re only ’ere for a fry-up, not a bloody lecture.” Eddy punched his father’s shoulder good-naturedly and the three of them walked down to the last of the traditional greasy spoon cafés in Soho, a place where Larry Jenkins had been having his sausage and eggs every morning for over twenty years. Over baked beans and toast with a kipper staring up at her from a side plate, Janey leaned over.

“You haven’t answered me, Eddy. Did you run away after that night when nothing happened between us?”

His father coughed with embarrassment, then buried himself in a copy of the Morning Star while a blushing Eddy folded his paper napkin over and over.

“Did me no harm. Look where I am now, eh? If I wanted I could buy out Dad here and the rest of Berwick Street Market, for that matter.” Eddy couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of his voice.

Janey and his father stared at him, neither smiling.

“And wot would that achieve, lad, eh?” his father fina

lly answered softly, then turned back to Janey. “See, no hope for the boy. It’s all pomp and circumstance with him, all golden balls and hot air. Money don’t matter that much, Eddy, not in the grand scheme of things.”

In lieu of an answer Eddy turned on his BlackBerry, which had now been switched off for ten hours. To his horror, he noticed that there were 120 messages for him. Two were from Cynthia, no doubt wondering where he was. The other 118 were from the Asian offices of his investment bank, and that was far more worrying. He looked at his watch—six-thirty a.m.; Asia had been open for five hours, and his meeting with the Chinese businesswoman was at ten. Cynthia could wait. He turned to Janey.

“Quickly, give me your mobile number.”

“07325 678710.”

He tapped it into his phone as she spoke, then, after standing and giving her a quick kiss on the forehead, moved toward the door.

“See he doesn’t steal any of me toast,” he joked, indicating his father. He stepped out of the café into the morning light now sharpening with the sun, flicked his phone open, and pressed the direct number to his counterpart in the Singapore office, who answered immediately.

“Where the fuck have you been, Ed?” Jeff, a brash Jewish New Yorker, was not renowned for his hysteria—Eddy’s first thought was that there’d been another 9/11.

“What are you talking about? It’s just gone six-thirty here.”