The Belle Hotel

by Craig Melvin

  Charlie had had his way. It had hurt too much to have his name missing from the gossip in the press. Thousand pounds and ticket this, champagne-drought that. After the branding story went national Charlie needed all the good press he could get, so Franco let him do it, on the understanding that he didn’t have to pretend he was enjoying himself.

  ‘Not for one bloody minute, lad.’

  Janet had her hands full too, with four tables set up in the bar, rounds of ten for prominent Hove types, and her running the unlimited boozing opportunities listed on the side of Franco’s menu. She too had taken a vow of sourness.

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ said Charlie as he helped Fish prep another platter of scallops, flash-fried in a pinch of chilli and onto the waiting shells ten at a time. The trainee stood by with a bucket of crushed peas, to scoop in each before Charlie shot each shell with a drizzle of sauce he’d bottled earlier. He loved it. Five hundred quid a ticket and they could have filled the place twice over. Silly money. Three-star food prices. Well, he’d just have to give it to them. Belle Hotel three star, that was.

  Michelin were already expressing doubts about re-listing. There’d been mutters about lack of development. Scared of the backlash about bullying, more like. Lack of development. What did those fuckers want, blood? Charlie had grafted his arse off for that star. Taken Franco’s classic dishes and elevated them. Added the fifth taste, umami, to everything he could fucking think of to make it happen. Wrung every last ounce out of his five senses to make each dish the best, the very best version of itself it could be. Touch, taste, sound, smell, sight… he’d smashed everything he had at it. And then the sixth sense, the one that Franco had always hinted at. The one Charlie had to discover for himself. Well, Charlie knew what that sixth sense was now. No need to tell Franco like it was some part of the damn masterplan. Charlie had worked it out for himself. The sixth sense Charlie needed was his own bloody genius. Born a chef. Grafted like a chef. Earned his star like a chef. All on his own God-given genius, talent, time and dedication. If you wanted a taste of genius, book ahead. Bold complementary combinations of strong flavours, vividly coloured, confidently plated, served with panache, everybody on board, working to the beat of Charlie’s drum, and damn well meaning it. Charlie and Lulu, getting good at it together and then falling the fuck apart in a fist fight of sexual jealousy and fatigue. Bone-tired, bitter, broken. She’d left him for what? Some trendy restaurant in London. Fickle fucking fashion foodie gastrodrome thing instead of being here at Belle Hotel where she belonged. The place they’d grown up and made their pact. No wonder Charlie had lost his temper. Lulu’s fault.

  Krug in buckets, not a napkin in sight, just look at the label and enjoy. Staff at the ready to pop on signal. Franco loved his pops. Thought the silent fart the French favoured too stupid for words.

  ‘It’s a celebration, let them have it!’

  Franco stood on a chair as usual for the briefing, leaning down for a moment to steady himself on the its back before standing to his full seven foot and continuing.

  ‘We’ve got plated scallop starters, watch those shells, they tend to slip about a bit. Give ’em a second show of bread. We’ve got a lot of booze to mop up and it’s free pour. I don’t want my cellar drinking dry. Baron of beef for mains. We’re having the bugger piped in on the crêpes wagon. Charlie’ll come in – Janet can you make sure he’s got a clean jacket? – and carve. Queue up, three plates a person. You all know how to do three, right, and then go back into the kitchen for your spuds, sauce and veg. We’re going to use the three-foot platters’ – groans all round – ‘and I want you to find room for the sauce boat too. It’s a truffle and red wine jus. Not gravy. Got that, Glen?’ Laughter. ‘Belle Hotel Trifle for afters and then at eleven thirty we’ll serve the savoury. Cheese soufflé. Charlie wants you to serve it fast. Too slow and you lose the effect. Got that? Now we’ll have a little chat about the wines and a little taste of the red. Remember, the champagne they don’t touch is ours at midnight. Good luck and remember, it goes down well at the Belle!’

  Franco stepped down from the chair – he’d done jumping in the eighties – and set off to check on things with Charlie. Seven thirty start time and guests were already waiting in the lobby. Fools. Go home and come back when we’re ready. Charlie and Franco had their customary bicker about music. Brel, Beatles, Blur… and the stage was set. Lights across the ground floor were all either low or off. Six-hour night lights flickered from frosted holders on every available surface. The whole of Belle Hotel swayed along with Brel.

  Charlie stepped out for a fag and a breather. The traffic in Ship Street was already choking up the seafront, brake lights red against the roaring sea. Punters in outfits they’d been wearing in their heads for months, off to the most over-promised night out in a thousand years.

  Eleven thirty and the soufflés were going out. So were the night lights, but everyone was past caring. Charlie was proud. Even Franco was smiling. He leaned across the heat of the pass and squeezed his boy on the shoulder.

  ‘Well done, lad.’

  ‘Well done yourself, old man.’

  Glen brought the two of them a glass of champagne and they allowed themselves a moment of celebration.

  Janet was wrestling with the rusty tops of the last few bottles of port. Shit, she’d cut her finger. No time to do anything about it now, just wrap it in this wet napkin. Ruby red was oozing through damp white. Table four asked for sambucas. What, now? They couldn’t be serious. Better fetch Franco. Where was he? Let him sort them out. Flaming sambucas, typical of those Robinsons. Bastards.

  Charlie was knocking them back at the porthole, his work was done. At a quarter to two thousand, his grandfather entered the dining room with a platter of blue flame. Charlie watched in horror as the old man slipped, no, crumbled, and the burning mess raged down his hand-cut suit. At first there was laughter. Nervous, of course, but laughter, none the less. Then some bright spark chucked an ice bucket of water at Charlie’s fallen hero. The lumpen liquid stopped the flame and Franco’s heart.

  Everybody agreed it was nobody’s fault. They managed to move him to the lobby. Janet wailing, Charlie pumped Franco’s wet front. The ambulance took forever, a barrage of pissed, suicidal Whitehawkers taking precedence over this four score and ten survivor. Except he didn’t.

  Flashing blue faded away to red at the end of Ship Street and Charlie’s grandfather’s clock struck Franco Sheridan out.

  2000s

  0% Interest

  Hookes Bank

  Charlie Sheridan

  Belle Hotel

  Ship Street

  Brighton

  5 January 2000

  Dear Charlie,

  It is with a heavy heart that I write with deepest sympathy for the loss of your grandfather, Franco. Franco was a valued client of the bank since he opened Belle Hotel in 1973. I am honoured to have called Franco a friend. I’ve written to your mother separately with my condolences and the information I am about to give you.

  Franco is [rest of letter burnt]

  Charlie backed the Jag out of the garage. He’d not checked the insurance, but assumed Franco had him as a named driver. Not that Franco had ever let Charlie drive the new Jag. One look at the van put paid to that.

  ‘Mum, get a move on,’ he yelled from the wound-down window, ‘it’s almost ten.’

  Janet came out of the pub door, shoulder to toe in black and a peacock-blue turban on her nut. Johnny had done his when he heard the contents of Franco’s will and declined the invitation to come and mourn the old man’s passing.

  Charlie had been out the day before, to Badger menswear in North Laine, place where Franco was getting his John Smedley sweaters right up until his timely demise, and bought himself a Paul Smith peacoat, midnight blue with a scarlet lining. He wore the coat over his chef’s whites in his own sartorial gesture to the old man.

  He’d liberated the Hookes Belle Hotel chequebook from the inside flap of Franco’s book and had already been
on something of a spree. Franco would be turning in his grave, if he was in it; it being the Millennium meant that Franco had to wait on the slab for ten days longer than normal. Ten days, ten cheque stubs, that would have told quite a story, had Charlie bothered to fill them in. Peacoat, Porsche, powerboat, Pussy Parlour, Pioneer Hi-Fi, powder for marching, Portobello restaurant lease, page tribute to Franco in Caterer magazine, Paul Peters lunch and a parrot.

  Charlie lost the parrot on the train home after the Paul Peters lunch, which, in his defence, came after he’d consumed all the marching powder and signed a ten-year lease on a Portobello restaurant, and before he spent the rest of the night gazing into space at Pussy Parlour.

  Lulu stood next to Roger at the caterers’ graveyard behind the station as he wept buckets onto Franco’s coffin.

  ‘Franco made me the man I am, Lu. The man I am.’

  Charlie quit trying to get Lulu’s attention after his mother had hissed at him to stop winking. Janet then joined Roger in slinging salt water into Franco’s hole.

  ‘Lu,’ Charlie caught her arm, just as she was attempting a French exit.

  ‘Sorry, Charlie, I can’t stay any longer. Sorry for your loss.’

  ‘My loss, your loss, too, Lulu, remember?’

  ‘I’m sad, Charlie, I really am. But Franco wasn’t my grandfather. In fact, you know. You’ve been acting like such a dick for years. It’s very hard to love you. You’re forceful, like Franco, but you… lack his… resolve. I’m worried you’re going to fuck things up, Charlie Sheridan. With Franco gone.’

  ‘What can I say, I’m a chip off the old block. If you hadn’t abandoned me, chucked the towel in in the final round, none of this would have happened. I’m losing my birthright, Lulu, the one I got from Franco that skipped Johnny. Born a chef.’

  ‘Born a twat, more like.’

  ‘And you, what are you? A coward. Couldn’t handle it, ran off to London leaving me and Franco in the shit.’

  Lulu rolled her eyes and did the yak, yak, yak thing with her hand.

  ‘Don’t give me that, Lu. In fact, you know what? I’ll tell you something. Franco wouldn’t be in the ground if you’d stuck around. He was picking up your work that night. The work you should have been there doing. Your selfishness killed my grandfather.’

  ‘My selfishness, mine. That really takes the biscuit. Okay, Sheridan, you asked for it. Both barrels, here, today. I don’t fucking care any more. You want to know why Johnny isn’t here?’

  Charlie glared back at Lulu. ‘Money. As per. Franco wrote him out of the will. Quite right. Another Belle Hotel deserter.’

  ‘No, Charlie. Not money. Blood.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Lulu is hissing now, pulling Charlie close to her by the lapels of his peacoat. Just low enough for those pricked-up ears to miss it. ‘Johnny isn’t Franco’s son. He told me that night at The Savoy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, not his son. So that means… you, you “born a chef” bighead… aren’t.’

  ‘No, Lu. I don’t believe you. It’s not true. You’re messing with my head. Lulu. Don’t say this. I can’t—’

  Charlie left the graveside and went to sit in the Jag. Guests pretended to ignore him repeatedly smashing his hands down on the steering wheel. An act that only came to a stop when the airbag went off in his tear-stained face.

  Brampton and his wife rode silently in the back of the Jag back to Belle Hotel. The buffet did Franco Sheridan justice.

  Lulu caught the next train back to London after the burial. She couldn’t face going back to Belle Hotel and felt terrible about the whole Franco, Johnny and Charlie thing. She’d ignored his call at midnight on Millennium night and only checked the message the morning after. It was Charlie’s fault, she told herself, but the bastard had managed to make her feel guilty. And now, acting the fool at Franco’s funeral to get her attention. That was taking it too far, even by Charlie’s standards. But pushing her to the point of vengeful spite? That was quite a thing to do at a family funeral. Good work, Charlie. Lulu shook with anger. The worst thing was, betraying Johnny’s secret hadn’t made her feel any better and she wondered if it would have any positive effect on Charlie’s unreasonable behaviour. Things were manic busy for her at work. Two weeks until The Wolseley opened and they had so much to do. Lulu knew that they’d get it all done, she’d done a stint for Jeremy and Chris at The Ivy after leaving Quag’s. It was just too hard seeing Thierry on a daily basis. After The Ivy, Lulu had become a bit of an opening queen, moving from one grand new restaurant opening to the next. And in Blair’s booming London there was no shortage of grand restaurant openings. The Wolseley was the jewel in the crown and she was proud to be offered assistant restaurant manager under the wonderful Byron who’d been with her at The Ivy. Sure, they were putting in eighteen-hour days, she never saw the new flat she’d bought in Brixton, but this place was going to be the talk of the town.

  That is why, the invitation, when it came a week later from Charlie, was so supremely irritating to Lulu. Irritating, wasteful and disrespectful. Typical Charlie.

  ‘Charlie, can I take five days off to go on Concorde to Barbados? I mean, don’t you have any brains? One, I wouldn’t go with you. Two, even if I did want to go with you, and Sandy Lane would be nice, what if I had the most important week of my career happening next week? Do you think I’ll drop everything just because you flash Franco’s cash? Not impressed. If I wanted to go to Barbados, I’d ask my dad. Goodbye, Charlie. Have a nice time on your own. Saddo.’

  ‘But, Lu—’

  She’d gone, slung the phone back in her bag and turned back to the wiener schnitzel tasting. A far more productive use of her time.

  Charlie was asked to leave Sandy Lane on the second day of his flying visit. Two newlywed couples had complained to the general manager about his drunkenness. Not having anything other than Franco’s chequebook with him, Charlie spent the final three nights of his solo honeymoon sleeping on the beach.

  By the time he’d kicked his British Airways bag in the general direction of Belle Hotel’s reception, over twenty thousand pounds’ worth of new kitchen equipment had been delivered, including a state-of-the-art convection oven that was too tall for Charlie’s greasy ceiling. After five seconds’ thought, Charlie ripped out another cheque for as many grand to get the floor lowered by one of Roger Hardman’s men.

  ‘Convection cooking,’ Charlie muttered to himself as he watched the guy hacking away at the floorboards, ‘that’ll get me my second star.’

  Charlie looked up at the heavens, remembering what Franco had said over that glass of bubbly on Millennium night.

  ‘Two stars, Charlie Farley, that’s what that Roux lad’s got. We’re going to add getting a second star to the masterplan. You and me, kiddo, against the world. We can do this. Knuckle down and let’s shoot for the stars.’

  Michelin Guide

  Letter of Commiseration

  Charlie Sheridan

  Belle Hotel

  Brighton

  1 April 2003

  Dear Charlie,

  We are sorry to inform that you have been de-listed from the Michelin Guide. Feel free to contact us if you would like to receive some feedback and pointers to set you back on track.

  In the meantime, we’d still like to talk to you about advertising in the guide. One of our sales team will be in touch in the next few days.

  Yours sincerely,

  The Michelin Guide

  Charlie snarled like the Pavlov’s dog he’d become and stuck the fatal blow in the back of Franco’s book. Drips of sweat ran down his back. This was serious. Really serious. Word had got out. The Argus, the Guild, Charlie knew how those bastards talked and now this, de-listing from Michelin. De-listing spelled death for most restaurants. Just when Charlie had big expansion plans. Fuck them. What did they know. Which of them had ever slaved over a hot stove for twenty hours straight. Damn, he should have done a Marco and given his star back before they took it away. Bastard
s.

  *

  Hookes Bank

  Charlie Sheridan

  Janet Sheridan

  Belle Hotel

  Brighton

  13 October 2004

  Dear Charlie and Janet,

  This letter is to inform you that you are about to enter an overdraft position at the bank. As this is the first occasion in thirty years that the account has been in this position, I ask that you contact me at your earliest convenience to talk about an overdraft arrangement and covenants against Belle Hotel and its assets.

  Yours,

  Paul Peters

  ‘Anything interesting in the post, Charlie?’

  ‘Usual junk, Mum. How about a cuppa? I’m parched here.’

  The Argus, March 2005

  ROGER HARDMAN RETIRES

  Local boy made good, Roger Hardman, has sold his carpet business for £5 million. Roger started out selling faux wool carpets door-to-door in the 1970s and has bought his business back from the receivers and built it back up again twice in the intervening years. Roger spent the first day of his retirement on his boat Shagpile II in Brighton Marina with a glass of bubbly and the company of Tina Jacker, 23, a former model from Worthing. Hardman said of his bounty: ‘I intend doing good works with this money. I have a comfortable enough lifestyle, as you can see, and my daughter Lulu is making her own way in the world without my help. So it is time to give something back.’

  Roger is reported to be looking into becoming the sponsor of the new academy school being formed out of the failed former Brighton Secondary Modern. He has also received in excess of 3,000 applications for funding from Brighton fringe arts collectives.

  Charlie walked down to the marina. Thought the Porsche might give off the wrong message. He could see what he was looking for from the top of the cliff.

  ‘Helloooo. Anyone about?’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Hello, Roger. May I come aboard?’

  ‘Sure, wait a sec, I’ll go and put some things on.’

  Charlie waited, feet up on deck as a weak English sun hazed off oily waters.