“Sorry, Mr. Maguire, but do you consider waiting on the public beneath you? Because that’s what we do here.”
“No, no. Look, Mr. Eccles, I think you might have got the wrong idea. I know who it was that suggested you see me”—told you to hire me, I guessed, but that was probably better left unsaid—“but I’m not one of his—I mean, I don’t expect—”
I took a deep breath and started again. “Thing is, I really do need a job. A proper job, and I really will do anything. Cleaning toilets, washing out bins, I don’t mind. I mean, if I’m good enough, and you think I could handle it, I’d love to learn to work front of house, someday. But believe me, you don’t want me out there any time soon, not unless your customers like their food in their laps.”
Eccles looked thoughtful, as if he wanted to believe me, but thought this might be some sort of trap.
“And what will you tell our mutual friend?”
Obviously he meant McGovern, and obviously McGovern was no friend of his.
“I won’t tell him anything. Even if you don’t have anything for me to do, and send me home. He owed me a favour, and meeting you was the favour. He never promised me a job. It’s up to you. Honestly.”
Eccles took his glasses off and tapped the arm against his teeth. It was a weird moment—I’d seen him do that on telly, in a commercial for Irish butter. “Come with me,” was all he said. He stood, pushed back his chair and strode out of the room, me scampering after him like Igor after Dr. Frankenstein.
As we entered the kitchen a low hum of activity jumped in volume. There was a lot of clattering of pans and shouts of “Yes, Chef!” Clearly all the kitchen staff were terrified of Eccles and determined to look busy and efficient. He led me past one counter where a frantic girl folded and crimped tiny sculptures of pastry, and another where a chef, his hands glittering with scales, gutted and filleted a gleaming pile of fish. Right at the back of the kitchen a tall lugubrious bloke in chef’s whites topped off with incongruous long black rubber gauntlets was scraping what looked like dried egg off a stainless-steel pan.
“Gordon,” said Eccles. The tall chef turned and practically jumped to attention, barking, “Yes, Chef!”
“You’re on fish,” said Eccles. “Go help Eric. And listen very carefully to what he tells you.”
Gordon beamed in delight and tugged frantically at his rubber gloves. He was being promoted, I realized. How many eons had he been serving his apprenticeship here, scrubbing pots?
“Yes, Chef. Thank you, Chef,” he babbled. Eccles merely jerked his head for him to get a move on. Picking up Gordon’s discarded gloves, he slapped them against my chest.
“Got a dishwasher at home?”
“No.”
“You know how to wash up, then.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, Chef. You want overalls?”
“I’m fine like this, Chef,” I said.
“So get stuck in.”
And he walked away.
Pulling on the rubber gauntlets I surveyed the teetering stack of pans to my left, encrusted with pastry, dried-on egg and what looked like fish skins burned onto stainless steel. I squirted soap into the vast shiny sink, turned the hot tap on full blast, picked up a handful of steel wool and started to whistle.
After half an hour I was wishing I had asked for overalls, because it was hot steamy work, and my T-shirt was clinging to my torso with sweat. I didn’t think it was the sort of kitchen where going topless was encouraged—the kitchen staff were all in full buttoned-up uniform, though it was as hot as Hell’s boiler house in there. Eccles moved among them calmly, rarely raising his voice except to be heard over the hiss and roar of the pans and burners. He saved the histrionics and drama for his TV shows, I guessed. Gordon came to see how I was getting on at one point, and I got him to show me where the overalls were. They were so big and loose they let in a cool draught, so wearing just them as a top I could toss my sweaty T-shirt to one side and keep going.
In the course of the evening the noise and activity rose to a roar, and the dirty pans piled up like shrapnel from a battlefield, but I scrubbed them down, rinsed them off, stacked them on the worktop to my right and kept going. At one point the pastry chef I’d noticed earlier dashed over, plonked down cutlery and a plate of salad with a chunk of salmon baked in pastry, and ran off again. I ate it in snatches so as not to slow down my output. It was bloody delicious. Apart from that, everyone else in the kitchen pretty much ignored my existence, which was fine by me.
I noticed the noise diminishing before I ever thought to look at the clock. It was gone half eleven, and the pile of pans had shrunk to the extent I could actually count them. By twelve I was rinsing down the sink with a cloth, unaware that Eccles had come to watch me. When I sensed him there and looked round, he was standing with his arms folded and a vague grin on his face as if he’d won a bet.
“That’ll do,” he said.
“Do I get the job?”
He snorted. Reaching into the rear pocket of his chef’s trousers he produced a slim wallet, opened it, deftly thumbed out five twenties and handed them to me. I stared at them.
“For seven hours’ work?”
His look told me not to ask stupid questions.
“Thanks very much, Mr. Eccles.” The rubber gauntlets slurped as I peeled them off.
“Your name’s Finn?” he asked, as if he hadn’t really been listening earlier.
“Yeah.”
“Sort out your shifts with Josie, the manager, OK? And if you can’t make it for any reason, call her.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I mean, I will. I mean, I’ll be here, Chef.”
He nodded and walked out, to reverent murmurs of “Night, Chef.” I chucked the overalls into a laundry basket, wrung out my T-shirt and tugged it back on.
On the Tube home I kept touching the notes folded in my pocket as if they might vanish like fairy gold. I’d signed up for seven nights a week, with two days off every fortnight. A hundred quid a night, seven nights a week … But maybe that was just a starting bonus. Maybe once Eccles put me on the books properly he’d start paying me the statutory minimum. No, I thought. He’s paying me over the odds because he thinks I’m part of some protection scam, and if he doesn’t stuff my pockets I’ll go running to the Guvnor. But I’d told him it wasn’t like that—all I’d wanted was a fair night’s pay for a fair night’s work. Maybe I should tell him again, I thought. A hundred pounds a night, though … bollocks, I’d tell him sometime soon.
Then I remembered—the money hadn’t really been the point, not originally. The point had been to get inside one of the Guvnor’s businesses, to see if I could dig up the truth about who killed Dad. But if Eccles’s restaurant was just a cover for some criminal operation, it was a pretty elaborate and expensive one. Restaurants could launder money, I supposed—I had been paid in cash, after all—but not on the scale of a bookie’s or a casino. Did the Guvnor invest in the Iron Bridge because he wanted part of a classy and upmarket establishment to complement his usual nightclubs and brothels? But if Eccles was that scared of McGovern, how the hell did he end up in business with him?
Unless he was never given an option.
I wasn’t sure how much I could find out about the Guvnor by washing pans every evening, but suddenly I realized I was too knackered to think about it any more. It was nearly one when I turned into my own street, and I was so shattered I could barely lift my feet. I didn’t notice the girl till I was practically beside her; she’d been hidden by a bay window of the house that poked out onto the pavement, two doors up from mine. In fact, I walked right past her, and she had to call to me from under the hood of the anorak that was hiding her face in shadow.
“Hey,” she said. “Got a light?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Don’t smoke.”
“So I can’t bum a cigarette, then?”
“Why do you need a light if you don’t have any cigarettes?” I said.
She pulled her hood back, shook her h
air free, looked more closely at my face, and grimaced.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “It’s you.”
Last time we’d met Andy had claimed she was hogging the best seats in Max Snax and sent me to throw her out. What she was doing in my street at one o’clock this morning I had no idea, but rather than leave her there I invited her into my house, and she shrugged as if she didn’t care one way or the other. She came in all the same, though, and now she stood in the middle of my living room, hugging her parka tightly around her.
“It’s colder in here than it is out there,” she said.
“I know. You want a hot drink?”
“Can’t you just turn the heating on?”
“Sure,” I said. I went to the boiler in the kitchen, flicked the switch and listened for the tick tick whumph. When I came back into the living room she was flicking idly through the window envelopes on the table addressed to my dad. I was pretty sure they were bills, and they’d been piling up for the last few days, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to open them. I’d never have made head nor tail of them anyway.
“My name’s Finn, by the way,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “I heard you might have some weed. Or some sniff.”
“Who told you that?”
“So do you or don’t you?”
“I have beer,” I said. “That’s it.”
“I’ll have a beer, then.” Still hugging her anorak about her, she let herself fall backwards onto the sofa. The fake leather creaked and farted as she sank into the clapped-out cushions. I didn’t move. She glanced up like she was wondering what was holding up her order, met my eye and looked away. “I’m Zoe,” she said in a small voice.
As I fetched the second-last can of beer from the fridge I saw that if she asked for anything to eat I was stuffed. All the fridge held was half an onion wrapped in cling film and going mouldy, and an empty margarine tub. I really would have to resign myself to going shopping.
“So how’s business in the glamorous world of high-speed catering?” Zoe called from the other room. I returned and handed her the can.
“Same old. Sorry, all the glasses are dirty,” I said.
“Where are your parents?” she asked as she pulled back the tab and took a slug.
“My mother left a long time ago. My dad’s dead.”
“Really? Wish mine was.” Her childish bravado irritated me. She had no idea what it meant.
“He was murdered. A few days ago. Funeral’s on Monday.”
“Shit.” She looked embarrassed. I suspected that didn’t happen very often. “Sorry, I mean.” She took another swig. Now I felt childish, as if I’d been boasting. My dad’s deader than yours.
“I don’t work at Max Snax any more,” I said. “They fired me. I was actually glad, because I hated the bloody place, but I never had the bottle to quit.”
“So what are you doing now?”
“Washing pans in a restaurant.”
“Doesn’t exactly sound like a promotion.”
“Money’s better,” I said.
“Aren’t you having one?” She held up the can.
“I’m too knackered,” I said. “And I don’t drink that much anyway.”
“I should go,” she said. But she didn’t move.
“Aren’t your folks wondering where you are?”
“My dad doesn’t give a shit,” she said. “And the feeling’s mutual.”
“So where does he think you are?”
“At a friend’s.” She shrugged again. I wondered how bad things must be at home if she’d rather be sitting in the house of a total stranger with nobody knowing where she really was.
“What were you doing in Max Snax anyway?” I said. “At that time of the morning? Have you been excluded from school or something?”
“I was just bunking off. You don’t think I’d wear that shit-brown uniform if I didn’t have to? Why don’t you put some music on?”
“Hi-fi’s knackered.” I yawned.
She put the can down, as if she really meant to leave, but still didn’t get up off the sofa.
“Thanks for this,” she said. “I really should go.”
“Want me to call you a taxi?”
“No thanks. Don’t have enough money anyway.”
“What were you going to use to buy drugs from me?”
“Why do you have to ask so many bloody questions?”
“It’s my house,” I said.
“Use your fucking imagination,” she said. But she couldn’t meet my eye. She had the shameless slapper act off pat, but it was still an act.
“In that case, I’m really sorry I don’t have any weed,” I said. “What do I get for the beer?”
“Sparkling conversation.”
I laughed, and she joined in, and we sat there giggling like kids for a moment.
“Where are you planning to go?” I asked. “If you turn up at home this time of night, it’ll just make your dad more suspicious.”
The giggling evaporated. “What do you care?” she said. The tone of her voice made it sound like she said that a lot.
“You can crash here if you want,” I said. “On the sofa. I can leave the heating on for tonight, down low. There’s a spare quilt upstairs.” It was on Dad’s bed, but I wasn’t going to offer her his bed. I didn’t want her in his room, though I didn’t mind her downstairs. In fact, I had to admit, I quite liked her being there. I didn’t want to say so, though. I thought it’d sound lonely or lecherous or creepy, or all three, and I wasn’t any of those. Was I?
“No thanks,” she said, testing the sofa with her shoulder blades. “This thing’s all lumps. What’s it stuffed with, newspaper?”
“Suit yourself,” I said.
“Can’t I sleep in a bed?” She looked directly at me, with her head tilted slightly to one side. I was pretty sure she didn’t mean my dad’s bed. I was tempted, of course; you couldn’t make out much of her shape under that big parka and those jeans, but I remembered those legs from last week. Even the way she swigged beer from a can was distracting, and she had the face of a sulky, scolded angel. But I felt I was being taken for granted, and I didn’t like that. I could feel a serious objection building in the region of my crotch, but I overruled it.
“Take it or leave it,” I said.
“OK,” she said meekly. I wasn’t sure if she was relieved or offended.
“You want the quilt?” I said.
“Yes please.”
“What about a toothbrush?”
“Do I get a bedtime story as well?”
I snorted. She took the piss so well you couldn’t help but admire it.
Dad’s quilt was one of those cheap thick numbers as stiff and bulky as an inflated airbed, and I nearly tripped coming down the stairs because I couldn’t see over the bundle in my arms. Finally I staggered into the living room and dropped it onto an armchair. When I looked up Zoe was wriggling out of her jeans. Her long legs were smooth and pale and I glimpsed a lacy thong under the tail of her T-shirt. I found myself wondering if her bra would match but she looked up and caught me staring, and flicked the hem of her T-shirt down so it covered her bum. I scratched my forehead as if trying to think of other bedding to bring her but really to disguise the fact I didn’t know where to look. It was a pretty crap disguise.
“I’ll leave early,” said Zoe. “That way I’ll be home before my dad wakes up. I really don’t need his shit right now.”
She pulled her hair back with both hands into a ponytail, arching her back. I couldn’t help noticing how the pose made her breasts stand out, and what truly fabulous breasts they were. She was doing it on purpose, I realized. It was like showing a quiz-show contestant the prize he could have won if he’d played his cards right. Now the objection from my trousers was so vigorous I could have pole-vaulted across the room. But the signals were all mixed up, and I liked her, and I didn’t want to blow this.
“There’s your quilt,” I said redundantly.
“Nig
ht.” She pulled it off the armchair, wrapped it around her and wriggled down into the sofa, punching a threadbare cushion into a pillow. That mound must be the curve of her hips …
Christ, I thought, and headed for the stairs. “Sleep well,” I said. I switched the light off in the front room, left the light on over the stairs, and headed for the bathroom. I’ll skip the details, but I wasn’t in there long, and went to bed glad I hadn’t taken her up on her offer, if she’d been making an offer. She would have been seriously short-changed.
That day I’d been for a run, visited my dad’s body at the undertakers, followed Elsa Kendrick home and worked a seven-hour shift on my feet at the Iron Bridge, and still I couldn’t sleep. Today two different women had propositioned me. Or sort of had. For the best part of a year I’d been wearing the beige polyester uniform of Max Snax, a passion-killer more effective than leprosy, and in that time no woman had even checked me out, that I’d noticed. Before that I’d never had a girlfriend for longer than six weeks. Boxing and running and working, I didn’t get to meet many girls, and I didn’t go out of my way to find any. Yeah, Trudy in the kitchen of Max Snax used to grab me when I walked past, but she was a round, cheerful woman of indeterminate age who would grope anything, including sacks of potatoes.
I’d lost my virginity at fourteen when I was high on something, or drink, or both, to a girl with long fair hair and a bored expression. I was the third of four guys in a queue. She was legal, just about, but it wasn’t an experience I looked back on for inspiration. But I once heard some guy on the radio talking about how after his wife had died all these women descended on him to offer solace, usually physical. I couldn’t remember if he’d taken any of them up on it—maybe he was too polite to say—but I found myself wondering if the same thing happened to guys who had lost their fathers. I wished I could talk to Dad about it, and then I remembered he’d gone, and I’d never be able to talk to him again about anything, unless you counted prayer. I wasn’t sure if I did count prayer but I was damn sure he didn’t. He used to call it “talking to your invisible friend.” Even if I did try praying to him, and he could hear me wherever he was, he’d pretend not to, just to be proved right. That thought made me smile.
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