the great british lull

a choral short story

The barista calls out “Siobhan” even though the waiting woman said her name was “Shauna” at the till.

Some of us wonder if baristas do this on purpose; a subversive power move in the molecular battle of interacting with customers they don’t like.

There is much to dislike about Shauna/Siobhan.

She clattered through the coffee shop doors and broke our calm into shards. In the queue, she fidgeted and twirled too and fro in a way that felt fizzy at our peripherals.

She unsheathed her phone from her taupe yoga pants and chose to make a phone-call just as she was about to be served, holding up the line.

Her body language, her tonality, her intensity—discordant.

Shauna/Siobhan only settles once the espresso is in her hands. She finds a seat close to the door and glares towards us.

Begrudgingly, we settle and creep back up into a light hubbub.

We revel here as The Great British Lull. No singular voice towering above another. No accent too distinguishable, no airpodded music louder than tinnish ambience. Each visa-tap is a spiccato beep. Every name hollered by the barista brings is its own crescendo. The disruptions of manhandled cutlery, scatter-graphed coughs, La Marzocco jet-blasts, yawn contagions, iMessage swooshes, sprinkled chuckles and giggles, hollow chairs skittering across the linoleum flooring as one of us rises to leave.

All of it percussion to a familiar symphony.

OI!

Many of our heads whip towards the Shauna/Siobhan’s calm-piercing yell.

That guy just stole!

We all wince, even those of us that believe Shauna/Siobhan’s accusation.

Who want to believe it.

Who agree with her.

None of us rise. All squirm. Bonded in…

Cowardice?

No. Are we not all brave in our own ways?

Indifference?

No. Too many of our jaws are clenched, fists balled. Too many of our feet are tapping, palms sweaty, ready.

Self-preservation?

Perhaps. Each of our hearts are woefully uncertain of the other’s. We are far more comfortable with polite business-minding (one of our greatest hits) than brash reaction (one of more our experimental, left-field passion projects). None of us wish to bargain on the altruism of the neighbour in the next seat.

We stay one in the quiet.

…A voice breaks away from our continent.

SHE didn’t take anything!

We try to remember his name. “Temi” was perhaps what the barista had called into our lull. His emphasis on the pronoun is laced with a bitter tone of knowing as if he’s faced the fine blade of accusation more times than we can count and has the scars to prove how intimately he who knows the price of silence.

The accused stands on the edge of us now, petrified by the door.

“Esmerelda. But Esme will fit on the cup nicer.”

Many of us feel sorry for them. How bitter it must feel, to be pushed from us by something as trivial as blame. Their dress, fitting off-kilter to their frame. Their make-up sitting askew. We can see that they are new to femininity—still figuring it out. If we don’t avert our gaze in shame, we can see clearly that it wasn’t Shauna/Siobhan’s accusation of theft that cleaved Esmerelda like the blunt-edge of the knife. It was the address within the accusation.

Temi’s dissenting voice peels further away from us with his volume.

Leave her be, bruv!

Some of us smirk at the irony of Shauna/Siobhan being referred to as “bruv”. A few of us don’t know how to feel. Temi’s voice bubbles the further he strays from us—forming its own gravitational pull.

Aye!

Another peels from us. “Lucy”. We remember her clearly because she made the barista snort with laughter. Before she blended into us, Lucy spoke about ignoring her needy friend.

She wanted to “post a wee selfie to instagram stories wi’ nay bother,” so she shared her fool-proof strategy. Respond to the needy friend first, selfie on stories after.

Lucy’s banter, infused with Scottish whimsy, cheered us up.

Poor lass is just trynae sip a coffee.

Lucy sounds maternal, hopscotching between empathy and assertiveness.

We worry about this escalating, knowing that escalation is a likely avenue for chaos.

We don’t maintain integrity well in chaos.

One more voice splits from us.

Yeah, give it a fucking rest, Siobhan!

We chuckle as a song.

Temi, Lucy, and Esmerelda, their varied timbre of laughs become lead instruments and everyone plays their part—except Shauna/Siobhan. Or perhaps she does, in her seething silence.

We chuckle in enough sprinkles that it makes her scoff and clatter out the door as cacophonously as she arrived (to the sarcastic, scattered applause of a few of us).

In Shauna/Siobhan’s absence, the bubbly-voiced Temi checks on Esmerelda. Lucy rises to speak to her, too.

And we slowly settle back into the serene rhythms of The Great British Lull.