Saturday 10th December

He was wearing a leopard-skin trilby and a red bow-tie.  A short dapper little man, with swarthy olive skin, a neat black moustache and Chinese eyes, he might have been Mongolian, he had that Oriental look about him.  I was sitting quietly minding my own business over an early morning coffee and toast.  Restless, I had been out walking in the Park again, and heading for home had dallied and dithered and returning by the most circuitous route I could think of I had stopped for  an early breakfast.  My mind was elsewhere and I hadn’t really noticed him at first; in fact I think he had wandered in and out at least twice before I really clocked him.  It was the trilby, of course, that did it, that triggered the conscious mind into acknowledging that I had seen him all along, I mean who could miss him in that get-up.  Not that he looked ridiculous, no he was too serious for that, and he was immaculately if somewhat eccentrically dressed despite his choice of headwear.  He was, as I said, quite short, and in that ferret-like way that short people often have he was quick and tidy in his movements, his patent leather shoes pointing outwards most elegantly as he skipped his way in and out of the café. But what on earth was he doing, why was he repeatedly (because he continued exiting and re-entering for the next few minutes) coming in and then looking about him and as if just remembering a forgotten appointment, turning sharply on his heel  and leaving, only to return again a minute or two later.  And the staff behind the counter seemed to just accept this behaviour as perfectly normal, and maybe it was, perhaps he was a habitué of this establishment, while admittedly I was a stranger, and this was his usual style of coming and going.  I was, despite my previous train of thought, (now abandoned altogether) intrigued and entranced and I stayed long after my coffee was finished, and my crusts of toast lying cold on the plate had been cleared away by the very ancient Italian waitress, who looked as if she was the proprietors mother or maybe even nonna (grandmother, as I discovered in our Italian sojourns).  And then I suddenly realised he wasn’t coming back anymore.  I was quite devastated, for fifteen minutes I had watched him come and go, and wondered who he was and where he came from and if he visited this particular café every day and what he did for a living and what nationality he actually was, and then he was gone.

I got up and paid the bill, and in passing asked the young man behind the counter who he was.  “Pardon, but who do you mean Madame?”   “Why the little man who kept coming in and going out.  Just a few minutes ago, you must have seen him.  You know, Leopard skin trilby and red bow-tie?”  “No, I am sorry, I just-a do my job, you see.  I work here every day, I no notice customers no more. Sorry.”

And that was that, I couldn’t stop myself from looking both ways up and down the street, but there was no sign of him at all.  I am sure I would have known him anywhere, the little bundled up walk, the dapper little steps he took, and besides, just how many people do you see dressed so distinctively.

But no, no hat, no bow-tie.  Just a passing moment in my day, and if I hadn’t had my notebook with me I too might well have forgotten him too, just like the assistant behind the counter.  But now I have written this down it will always be there to remind me of the day I saw the little Chinese looking man in his leopard skin trilby and red bow-tie.