Member-only story
The Happy Cafe — Roy Cane
The Story of a Friend and a Book
Roy’s The Happy Café was published in 2007, the year before he died. He was a dear friend.
Roy writes in The Happy Café :
Here is how it happens this morning of all mornings and every morning.
Outside, a street full of morning folk pass by the window. Morning folk all brisk and bleary and all in a just got out of bed late kind of a hurry. Morning people, greeting, smiling, frowning, meeting, scurrying, avoiding each other’s eyes, sometimes in a once upon a time there was that particular kind of morning after, sort of way. A morning after something best forgotten which cannot be forgotten and maybe, may be remembered forever. And pairs, perhaps a him and her, or him and him or her and her, who smile politely as they pass. No longer lovers, now they have no need of secrets. Only the sweetest of sweets of remembering…
Roy was a fine actor, poet and writer, who wanted to have a bash at Beckett’s one man epic, Krapp’s Last Tape. And like Beckett he used to wander around Stratford in the same fashion Beckett did Paris, who loved the city’s small corners, and its pavement cafes where Hemingway and the rest had once hung out.
And it was when I saw Roy, leather satchel over his shoulder, collar turned up and head down studying…
