Two Sides

It was weird, it felt like half the café was bathed in glorious sunshine while half looked like an old black and white, communist, propaganda film. There were 4 other people in the café with me. On the bright side there was the mother and baby who were both as beautiful as each other. It was a giggly baby, with wide eyes and chubby cheeks and a tuft of hair at the front that meant I half expected him to burst into a line of Blue Suede Shoes at any moment. The mother was beautiful, but her beauty was so subtle that you were in danger of missing it. It wasn’t a classical beauty. It wasn’t obvious on first inspection but it was there all right. It called to mind a Morecombe and Wise sketch, it was like she had all the right features but not necessarily in the correct order. Big hazel eyes, high cheekbones, a pouting mouth, a long slender neck but somehow they looked like a collection of leftovers glued together. Each piece beautifully more that the sum of the constituent parts. 

In the black and white side were a rowing couple ,obviously in the last throes of their relationship. God knows what minor irritant had caused this latest row but they were at it hammer and tongs. He stretched his arms out, the gesture said I'm sorry, but what can I do? If his action was conciliatory, the only word to describe her look was withering, full of contempt.

The hatred that sparked between them made me wonder if there’d ever been love. I guessed there must have been but it was long forgotten now. They could barely look at each other and soon the row subsided into angry silence. With no words left they, like me,  watched the mother and baby, the child still giggling as his mother tried to feed him some apple. I looked at the arguing couple, it was clear where the problem was, because whereas she was looking longingly at the baby, he longingly stared at the mother.