Prior Engagements

by Sarah Goodwin

  I went along Cheap Street, right down past the charity shops, knock-off handbag stalls, a chippy and a Sainsbury’s Local. There stood Raspberry Bs, situated between two other cafés, but then so was everything else in Bath.

  I pushed open the bubblegum pink door, expecting the air to be thick with awkwardness. What greeted me was a floor thick with gumbo.

  “You bloody idiot!” Will roared, as a stray prawn washed up against my shoe on a tide of tomatoey stock. Chunks of okra bobbed nearby. Water was cowering against the kitchen door, spattered with more of the tomato broth. Will stood over the two gallon pot, which was now empty, his hands still in his bunny oven mitts.

  “Ummm,” I said.

  Will turned to look at me. “Water is a moron, and we are out of the special.”

  This had happened before (the great dumpling cascade of 2010) and the clean-up was always a bitch.

  “Scoops and mops?” Will sighed.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” I said, taking off my shoes and rolling up my jeans (it didn’t pay to be squeamish when working with food, or indeed with Will, who had once gutted a cuttlefish in my shower – long story).

  Will fetched mops and dustpans to help scoop up the prawns and vegetables. Water was banished to the kitchen to clear up. Will would have to rustle up something quick to take the special’s slot on the menu.

  As he knelt, bare kneed, in the mess of gumbo, Will started to chuckle to himself. He looked up at me and I felt a bubble of laughter rising, and snickered over the poor, shipwrecked prawns.

  “This might get the last of those curry stains out,” Will snorted.

  “Oh God, I’d forgotten about the curry. God, that was a lot of turmeric.”

  “It was authentic.”

  “It was luminous. It eroded the floor.”

  “It only dissolved a little bit of the glue.”

  I huffed, raising an eyebrow. “What are you going to make instead of it? The gumbo?”

  “Uh... tinned string beans and frozen blueberries?”

  “Yum.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Um, how about... Mexican meatball soup?”

  Will scrunched up his face in the way that he always did when he was quantifying a recipe, down to the last grain of salt.

  “It can be done,” he announced, in his Gandalf voice.

  “Then go ‘do’ before hungry old dears and semi-evolved students start showing up.”

  Will saluted me, and then headed back to the kitchen. I heard him say to Water, “You are so lucky not to be fired right now. I suggest you buy a lottery ticket on the way home,” before the door swung closed.

  I kept scooping up prawns and swabbing stock until the floor was mostly clean, even if it still smelled quite strongly of fish and tomato paste.

  The bell over the door rang and I turned towards it, suddenly noticing the splash of sauce on my shirt. I brushed at it, smearing it over half my boob. Shit.

  “We’re actually closed for a few minutes...” I started.

  “Uhck,” said a voice. Just a noise, like that, imbued with all the disdain a human being could possess.

  I jerked my head up, glaring at the source of the sound, and found myself looking at three of the most mismatched human beings I had ever seen.

  The first was gawping down my top, and had eyebrows like mangy fox tails stapled to his waxy skin. He looked about thirty, but he was wearing tweed. Old tweed. Better-off-as-a-dog-blanket-tweed. The other two were in their forties, easy. One in a navy suit with a plaid bowtie, and one in a deep v, chest-hair-bearing shirt, and velvet skinny jeans.

  “We’re closed, sorry. There’s been a... minor gumbo-tastrophe.”

  I was hoping for a laugh, but instead I got six chilly blue eyes on me. Hark, I thought, Poshos.

  Why the bloody hell were they in Raspberry Bs? They could have plumped for Café Rouge, the Pump Rooms, or a trendy gastro pub. Poshos and Raspberry Bs did not mix. Like hipsters and Argos, Goths and the Edinburgh Wool Mill, archbishops and the dole queue.

  They looked at me, and then Velvet McChest-Hair, the ring leader, pipes up.

  “Three flat whites, when you’re ready.” Then they went to a table in the corner and turned their backs on me.

  Three coffees, side of spit, coming up.

  Oh yes. Not merely a sitcom invention. Tip your waitress, or swill saliva.

  I went into the kitchen to put away my cleaning things and get a fresh pint bottle of milk. I spat decorously into a stainless steel jug, and topped it up with milk.

  Will turned from where he was chopping onions, “Customers? Already?” he noticed the jug, “spitting? Already?”

  “Poshos.”

  “Uh-huh,” Will leant over and added his own contribution to the jug. “Do you think they’ll want food?”

  I put my hand on the door, “I’m sure they’ll want it. Doesn’t mean they’ll get it.”

  I shoved the door open.

  “That’s m’girl,” Will snorted, behind me.

  I realised I was blushing as I approached the coffee machine. Stupid Will and his constant flirtiness.

  I wrestled with the coffee machine. Why did Will maintain that we didn’t need a new one? At least a new one would produce coffee when asked, without the sense that it was merely indulging me. While I jerked levers and punched buttons until I was breathless, it chomped coffee beans with a reluctant rumble, and steamed milk with a sulky sigh.

  I delivered the three Grande Bastido Blancos to the men in their corner, then went to wash my feet in the bathroom and put my shoes back on.

  A few minutes later, once I had returned to the front of the café, one of the men, the bowtie, clicked his fingers at me. I pointedly ignored him, hoping he’d realise what a dick he was being, but he clicked like a flamenco dancer for over a minute, until I was forced to go over and ask,

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Three gumbos.”

  “I’m afraid we’re out of the...”

  He groaned distastefully, and pointedly slapped his menu open again.

  I bit the inside of my cheek, and broke out my café wench mantra, ‘Murder is a crime, I’d get very bored in prison’. Will had put it on a mug for my birthday (though I had since thrown that mug at a customer).

  I waited for them to order, which they finally did, with a lot of pointed sighs and biting of lips. Three bowls of French onion soup, with croutons and gruyere. (The gruyere was actually just Sainsbury’s basics cheddar, left unwrapped in the fridge for a while. No one could ever tell).

  I went back to the kitchen and gave Will the order. He was sweating his onions and measuring cups of beef stock with an intense look of concentration. All of Will’s recipes came from a series of websites run by foodies of every nationality – from Bostonian fish chefs to Pakistani dumpling experts. Their measurements were always precise to the decimal place, and Will took them very seriously.

  Because he was busy I took the French onion soup, which Will had made the night before, out of the fridge and poured it into a glass bowl. I put the microwave on for three minutes and went to get the croutons from their plastic box in the cupboard. Will was standing directly underneath that particular cupboard, and I complied with the same kitchen rules we’d always had, by opening the door and shouting ‘duck!’ at the same time. Will ducked smoothly, still measuring his stock out, and I reached for the croutons, effectively pressing my entire body against his back. This was not uncommon. Working in a tiny kitchen any sense of ‘personal space’ quickly becomes moot. It was not out of the ordinary for Will to crawl between my legs as I stood, whipping up coffees, to get at the plates stored under the counter. What made this particular moment so weird, was that Will froze, one hand still holding a measuring cup. His entire body went stiff, and as I dropped back onto my heels, the plastic box clutched in my hand, he turned around, and gave me a small, awkward smile, his eyes refusing to meet mine.

  I waved the croutons. “Thanks.”

 
“I need to make some more of those,” he said, turning back to his prep-station.

  “Just wait ‘till you burn a piece of toast.”

  “I never burn toast.”

  “The first three slices, every morning.”

  “That’s not me, that’s the grill.”

  “Then use the toaster.”

  “The toaster is too good for just toast.”

  I scoffed as I pulled the soup out of the microwave, poured it into three serving bowls, and sprinkled croutons on top. I jumped as Will appeared close at my elbow, setting a small bowl of grated cheese on the counter.

  “We’re, uh...low on cheese too,” Will muttered.

  “I’ll pick some up.”

  I added the cheese to the soup and put the bowls on a tray, spiriting them out of the kitchen and into the café. Why were things suddenly so weird? Will was my best friend; I couldn’t understand why he’d suddenly started freezing up around me.

  I stopped in the middle of the café.

  Un-bloody-believable.

  “Arse!”

  Will pushed open the kitchen door, a large knife in his hand, a sliver of courgette still clinging to it. “What?”

  “They’ve buggered off.”

  It was true, there were three empty coffee cups on the table, and no money. The three poshos had vanished.

  I sighed. “Fancy some soup?”

  “Once I’m done with the other soup.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I put the tray down on the counter and picked up a spoon, scooping up a crouton and some bits of golden onion in their broth. I could never turn down Will’s cooking, it was gorgeous.

  It was a slow day at the café, and by the time Will got the Mexican meatball soup on the go, we were only just getting our first (real) customers. They were for the most part shoppers who’d failed to arrive at a Starbucks or Costa Coffee in time to score a table. We doled out soup, toasted sandwiches and sliced up the dessert special of the day, which was Will’s favourite – dark chocolate and peanut butter pie. Finally, the last few patrons settled up and left, and Will went to microwave the onion soup, again, and find some leftover pie. I made coffee with the moody machine, a black coffee for Will with three and a half sugars (two white, the rest brown) and a latte for me. We sat at a table in the back, and managed to eat in silence for five whole minutes before Will asked, “How’re things with Dorian?”

  “I’m meeting his family at the weekend.”

  “Lunch with Lord and Lady Fleshlight, eh?”

  I frowned with mock severity. “Stop that.”

  Will snickered. “I hope you find something nice to wear. You’ll have to go shopping.”

  “I have lots of nice things.”

  “Yes, you do. I just thought you might want to get something new,” Will shrugged, “just so that you’d feel a bit more...at ease.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Will prodded his pie thoughtfully. “Nothing, just that...well, Dorian’s a fancy guy, right? So he’s got a fancy family. Just...don’t let them get to you.”

  I’d thought about it, obviously, the fact that Dorian was far fancier than me, and that his family were likely to be filthy rich and snooty to boot(y).

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I know you will,” Will smiled, “you’ll make a great daughter-in-law. If I had a son, I’d be thrilled to have him marry you.”

  “Oh really?” I said, my heart giving a nervous bump.

  “Of course...I’d be a nightmare of a father-in-law though – calling you ‘sweetheart’ and grabbing your arse at family dinners.”

  “You would have to be the pervy older man.”

  “I am,” Will insisted, waving his spoon. “I’m six months older than you, remember.”

  “But I’m so much more mature.”

  “Says the woman who ran off to get married in Vegas without letting me know.”

  I couldn’t think what to say to that, and an uncomfortable silence formed between us.

  “So...” Will said, leaning back and clearly attempting to climb out of the tangled web we’d created, “when do I get to meet him?”

  I was actually dreading the moment when Dorian and Will would meet. They were completely different, like a Tsunami and a fossilised forest, sultanas and sunglasses, eggs and the Queen Mother. They had nothing in common.

  Except me, I realised.

  “Umm....” I said, to distract Will from the frantically spinning dynamos in my brain, which I was certain he could see behind my eyes, “how about on Monday, I could bring him in to work?”

  This was an excellent plan, even if I said so myself. I was meeting Dorian (and his parents, eeep!) on Saturday, after my shift at BHS. On Sunday, I was working again, but meeting Dorian at his hotel in the evening for...married couple things (eeep! Again).

  Dorian was flying out again on Monday at noon, this meant that he’d only have time to glance at Will and say ‘Good morning, blimey that’s some bright hair you have there,’ before he’d have to dash off to the airport.

  And, crucially, Will wouldn’t have time to murder him.

  At the most Dorian could expect a non-fatal maiming.

  Will nodded, “sounds like a plan...I was thinking I might invite him to the pub on Sunday, while you’re doing the hard graft at the Cushion Emporium.”

  Massive danger signals howled in my head. If Will took Dorian to the pub (and that was a big if, Will had the attention span of a butterfly on crack, he and Dorian would probably end up at the Hollywood Bowl, or on a boat trip, or taking a tour of the Abbey, pretending to be Balinese tourists – though, Will was unlikely to do that twice), he’d have time to both murder Dorian, and dispose of the body, probably by stewing him down and making ‘Posh short rib ragu’.

  “Promise you’ll be nice to him.”

  Will made innocent eyes at me.

  “Don’t give me that – we both know you’re in league with Satan and all his wily imps.”

  “Well, you’ve got me with the imps,” Will said, “OK, I’ll be nice.”

  “Great,” I said, thinking that it had been far too easy getting him to agree.

  “As long as he’s nice to me,” Will added.

  I glared. “Dorian is a gentleman.”

  “Does that mean he’s going to pull out my bar stool for me?”

  “Har-di-fecking-har,” I said, in a savage and terrible Irish accent, (I have no idea why I do it, sometimes it just helps to convey my utter contempt for Will’s mockery).

  “Should I be sure to cross my ankles?”

  “You get one more, and then I’m going to throw my coffee on you.”

  Will’s brow creased up in thought. “What should I do if he makes an attempt on my womanly virtue?”

  “As he’s my husband, I’d like you to decline politely, and take the secret to your grave.”

  “Can do.” Will got up to take the dirty plates to the kitchen, “I’m still taking him to the pub.”

  “Damn,” I muttered to myself. I’d just have to let Dorian know what he was in for. And maybe give him a penknife, just in case of an emergency.

  “And, because I’m such a good friend, I’ll even help you pick out something posh at Debenhams.”

  “I can’t afford Debenhams...I can barely afford the bus to Debenhams.”

  “Well, I’ll pay for it. Think of it as your Christmas bonus...just really early.”

  I instantly felt uncomfortable, without really knowing why. Will and I bought each other things all the time; he paid for lunch, I bought the wine for our next night in, he lent me the money for a taxi home, I bought both our cinema tickets the following night. Money flowed between us, and we never kept score of who owed what to whom. We never had to.

  Still, this felt different, and I didn’t look Will in the eye as I said, “I can’t take your money.”

  “Why not? You can always pay me back.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Then I can just dock i
t from your wages, say, a fiver a week? You won’t even notice.”

  “Will, I just can’t.”

  Will seemed to sense the return of the awful tension. He looked at me. “Is this because of Dorian?”

  “Don’t make it sound like that.”

  “Like what? That you’re suddenly Mrs Devoted Wife, not allowed to accept favours from the other men folk?”

  OK, when he put it like that it sounded ridiculous, but it hit close to the mark. Fortunately, my anger allowed me to give up on reasoning and jump straight to the recriminations.

  “Stop it! Jesus, maybe I’ve just had it with taking handouts, OK? It might be nice if I can meet my posh in-laws in a dress that I actually bloody paid for.”

  Will’s jaw was set, his teeth gritted in the way they were whenever he was really angry.

  “And I suppose you won’t be letting Dorian buy you a dress either?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, you let him buy you a dress less than a fortnight ago. And a ring, and put you up in a famous hotel. I just wondered if he was planning on pulling a Prince Charming next weekend too.”

  “Will, stop it, stop twisting it...”

  “I’m not. I was just trying to do something nice, you’re the one who had to make a big deal about it.”

  “I am not making a big deal ab...”

  “No, it’s fine. Offer withdrawn,” Will stood up and stalked towards the kitchen. “Dorian’ll probably be able to afford you a nicer one anyway. You were smart to hold out for the better model.”

  The kitchen door closed at his back, leaving me in stunned silence, his last words still ringing in my ears.

  You were smart to hold out for the better model.

  You were smart to hold out for the better model.

  You were...

  I got up and went into the kitchen, where Will was preparing the mixture for tomorrow’s dessert special.

  “What do you mean, ‘you were smart’?” I asked.

  Will stirred cake batter furiously, facing the opposite wall. Water was plugged into iPod headphones, completely oblivious.