Drowning in the Shallow End

by Charlie Mellor

  Kitted out with freshly laundered uniforms and assigned our own area in the dining room to look after, we were all set. With a couple of previous seasons behind us, the experience for Annie and myself felt like an extension to our college daze – there were lots of new people to get to know and lots of socialising to be done. Given that Stuart had never been away from home, lived in a communal situation or ever managed his own finances before; I could also see parallels with going to college for the first time. Just like those halcyon Nene College days, we all hoped that Stuart’s first taste of independence would end up being a truly transformational experience.

  The three of us had no problem settling into the lifestyle. Truth be known we threw ourselves into everything the small seaside town had to offer: making friends with the locals, surfing at nearby Woolacombe Bay, taking part in the town’s summer carnival, embarking on boat trips to Lundy Isle, entering (and winning) the annual waiters’ race, even raising money for local charities through sponsored fun-runs up the impossibly steep cliff side paths. Hardly anyone knew us, there was no history to live down and for this one summer we could be whoever we chose to be.

  As the weeks continued, a familiar daily pattern emerged. We waited on tables at breakfast, caught up with sleep for a couple of hours, worked through the lunchtime session, then relaxed by sunbathing in the afternoon, building energy (as well as quite a nice tan) for the truly intensive evening dinner service. The last meal of the day was always the toughest service and by the time it was over we’d all be so pumped up with adrenaline we would race over to the staff house, get changed and then dart into pubs and clubs, guzzling down pint after pint of Natch cider, chased-down with shots of Woodsy’s rum until the early hours of the next day.

  The evening service was characterised by two hours of concentrated physical effort, with us all running in and out of a steaming hot kitchen, precariously carrying six to eight plates at a time. We were always understaffed and there was phenomenal pressure to serve as many people in as short a period of time as possible. Invariably you would burn your hands on either the unstable tower of plates you were carrying or the steel trays which were overfilled with steaming vegetables. At some point during each service you were guaranteed to fall out with at least one the intractable kitchen staff. To relieve the tension we’d play games, hiding other people’s crockery, glasses or butter portions - anything to take our minds off the forthcoming service. Just prior to the guests being released into the dining room like wild horses into an open field, we’d each grab a handful of the freshly baked bread rolls which were about to be offered to the diners and chuck them across the dining room at each other in a primitive version of dodgeball.

  The more capable waiters were asked to work in the nearby ‘Private Dining Room’ on a rotational basis. In this much smaller room, short stay guests were treated with far more consideration and offered a wider choice of meals than their coach party counterparts. Stuart and I hated being asked to work there. For a start, private diners were more demanding and had higher expectations, they were poor tippers and, worst of all, were allowed to turn up at any time during service which meant we could be late joining everyone for a few drinks after service down by the harbour.

  Early afternoon, Tuesday May 27 1986, I was called down to the reception area at the front of the hotel where someone was asking to see me. Thinking it may finally be a tip from one of my overbearing private guests I fastened my Imperial Hotel jacket and made sure I looked presentable. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a lad I remembered from Harrogate called Gavin Langham. He was someone I’d known vaguely back then because of his repeated attempts to befriend both me and my sisters when we first moved to the town. It must have been about six years since we’d seen each other.

  Even back in 1980 I’d only put up with him for a month or so before realising he was too boring. I was therefore shocked to see him and taken back he’d somehow managed to track me down – or to be honest, that he’d even want to. Is he on holiday, I wondered? Does he expect me to take him out for a drink?

  “Wow, this is unexpected, how are you Gavin?” I said.

  “Oh, you know, can’t complain. Six years at the University of Life have flown by. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, so thought I’d track you down. Not much going on back in Harrogate these days. Mr White, - you remember, our Head of FE - eventually married Miss Potts – been seeing her for years it turns out… The college built a new science block last year - cost millions according to the Advertiser. There’s even some talk that the tech-col will have to merge with Rossett High sixth form next year.”

  “Oh right,” I said, not in the slightest bit interested.

  “Now what else can I tell you … me Mam ended up in hospital in January, a problem with her digestion – it’s a bit better now, but she still can’t eat anything with too much fat content… Our lad still works at Farrah’s Toffee – the jammy git…” and so it went on. “I was just saying to your Mr Kingsley, it takes ages from Exeter station to get over here, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s Mr King-ston,” I said, relieved there was an opportunity to stop him talking and even more pleased the boss hadn’t heard what he’d called him.

  Picking up his one-way conversation by comparing the interior of the Devon bus he had travelled on with the ones in he had used Yorkshire; it all came flooding back to me. This was the Gav Langham, the misfit, the person most likely to be labelled a social liability at the Harrogate technical college. During the brief time I knew him, people I’d never spoken to before would come over and discourage me from hanging about with him because of his innate talent for getting on everyone’s nerves by trying just a bit too hard. Through bitter experience of starting school after school, I learned to be very cautious of people who were too keen to latch on to the new boy. Langham was one of these sycophants and, anxious not to get lumbered like I had done before, I fired a gigantic warning signal to my brain to remind myself not to spend any prolonged period of time with him.

  Standing at reception, it was immediately evident he’d made no progress in his ability to engage others and although he explained what he’d been up to since leaving college, I was already anxious to get as far away from him as I could. Flashing a frozen smile which would shame a solar-panel salesman, I nodded and listened to his dull ramblings praying his trip was just a short one. In fairness to him and through some twisted sense of duty, I did try to rein-in my involuntary disdain by reminding myself of the friendship he’d once offered. I appreciated the way Langham had made an effort to get to know me in those early weeks arriving in yet another new town.

  As the droning continued, it transpired Langham had heard what I was up to after talking to my sister Kirsty who’d stayed in Harrogate. With time on his hands he’d simply decided to jump on a train and see if he could find me. This meant he’d nowhere to stay, had little money and no job. Not ideal for either of us as I now felt it was my responsibility to look after him, even though I’d had no contact with him in years and didn’t consider him to be someone I’d have chosen to keep in touch with. Paralysed by his dullness, I felt obliged to respond to his request to see if I could find him a job, secretly thinking this might be a great way of absolving any sense of future responsibility for him. This was the mid-eighties and there were usually plenty of seasonal vacancies in the town for kitchen staff, waiters, cleaners or chambermaids. Perhaps to try and position myself as a mover and a shaker, I foolishly agreed to speak to Mr Kingston, who made an uncharacteristically bad business decision by offering Langham a waiter’s job without bothering to interview him. At least Langham might be able to make some new friends and Annie and I would be able to continue undisturbed with the rest of our summer adventure. What I hadn’t anticipated however was that he wasn’t alone.

  Somewhere in the intervening years he’d been introduced to Pennie Fenton. His intention was to stay in Devon for a while and invite Pennie to visit him on a regular basis – ideally crashing
in the staff house. Bloody hell - PENNIE FENTON!

  Now, for the first time in his life Gavin had my full attention. He knew Pennie Fenton? She was coming to Ilfracombe? I’d not expected to see either of them again, not this summer, not together. The prospect was electrifying and terrifying in equal measure. I could almost feel my pupils dilate with the news. It was, after all, Pennie who had made my nose spontaneously bleed; the same Pennie who’d once caught sight of me tripping over my faded blue C&A underpants...

  Pennie did indeed arrive, and although I was eager to spend time with her, we saw precious little of her or Langham. Instead the two of them cocooned themselves in their own little world, constantly together behind his now locked staff house door. The rest of the waiting staff were not especially bothered about Langham’s secret lodger – it made it easier to put up with the lad not having to see him. I wasn’t quite as laissez-faire about the arrangements as I desperately wanted to see Pennie and spend some time catching up. Annie and I had been together for nearly four years and were really happy, but following occasional references to my adventures with Pennie, she too was a little curious to discover what our mysterious new lodger was all about.

  I was extremely miffed thinking about Pennie spending so much time alone with Gav. He was just the sort of bloke you would forbid your daughters from dating. His unexpected association with Pennie amplified my antipathy for him. I began to tell anyone who would listen that he was not a cool guy, and in fact quite easy to dislike. Middle America would probably label him a ‘bit of a chump’. In northern England the phrase applied was ‘a complete wanker’. Not only had he been a dreary, lazy person to know at college, he was also a slovenly and work shy co-worker. It was clear nothing had changed during the intervening years.

  The majority of residents in the staff house wasted no time in taking an immediate dislike to Langham. It made sense for them to do this – subconsciously recognising that sooner or later they would grow to detest him. Up until his arrival there had always been a good team spirit between us, we looked out for each other, swapped shifts as required and all chipped in to keep the staff house in what we considered to be an acceptable state. Within days, it was obvious that Langham wasn’t interested in the needs of others: here after all was a man who boasted that shutting an open cupboard door as he dawdled past represented helping out around the house.

  If Langham’s arrival in Ilfracombe had been a shock, his friendship with my old Ripon contact was a disappointment. Their clandestine union tarnished my views of Pennie and, although I was still intrigued by her, I also thought less of her as a result. Clearly she was less discerning than I thought in terms of whom she spent her time with. Annoyingly, the two of them remained inseparable for most of the summer. Overall, he lived down to all the limited expectations I had of him; while Pennie left me with a sense of maddening frustration. I was dismayed someone I once thought so exciting now seemed so willing to compromise herself with such a loser. Thinking about it, I may also have been jealous.

  She wasn’t about every week, but whenever she did arrive we knew about it - because Langham effectively disappeared from view. If we did ever manage to drag the imbecile out (motivated by a desire to spend time with Pennie); it was by exception and he usually engineered it so he and Pennie were peripheral to the main group. I also noticed he became especially irritating in Pennie’s company. His lame jokes became lamer, his showing-off more blatant and his obsequious nature more transparent. When he wasn’t with Pennie, he ignored the few friends he’d made in Ilfracombe and came across as a miserable sod who was only interested in talking about her.

  Poor Langham was out of his depth. Terribly impressionable he had, I surmised, become a convenient conduit for Pennie’s many ambitions. While the majority of us continued to socialise after service, the two of them sneaked out to nightclubs none of us would have contemplated visiting. On one Friday night when we did all trek out together, we ended up getting totally paralytic – probably down to the novelty of all drinking in the same space. There was an odd atmosphere caused by the inclusion of a number of people Pennie had attracted, but who we didn’t know. She always managed to pull in life’s outsiders, the oddballs and the weak minded. With Langham she had found all three. On this particular night we were joined by what must have been Ilfracombe’s last remaining punk rocker the imaginatively named ‘Punky Pete’. He was an uncommunicative character with bleached spikey hair and seemed a little too old to still be wearing ‘bovver boots’ and bondage trousers from the late seventies. Judgements about dress code aside, he’d obviously managed to befriend Langham and at the end of the night invited Gav, Stuart, Annie and myself back to his flat – on the proviso that Pennie came too. She was always in the midst of things that summer - a catalyst for absurd episodes. Like in Ripon she was never directly culpable, but controversy and the unexpected were never far behind.

  On arrival at his ropey pad, this unlikable character claimed to have lost his door keys and told us all to crawl in through an unlocked window at the back of the property. Inside and once again incentivised by Pennie, he invited us to try some tea made from magic mushrooms. Stupidly, we all joined in. The experience reminded me of a few years earlier when Joe Morrit and I had dabbled with magic mushrooms. We’d tried them once and had a rotten time. I suspect we’d picked the wrong ones from a nearby golf course and had both ended up violently sick for nearly a week. I would normally have been much more cautious about experimenting again, however we’d all been to the pub and Miss Fenton, who was in her element, goaded us all on to taste the hallucinogenic brew.

  Much of what happened next felt like I was observing events from outside myself. Shortly after tasting the vile infusion I started to notice various distortions. I was amused watching Annie as she became transfixed by her own hands, swirling them madly around above her head. My stomach also felt warmer as if positioned too close to an open fire. Other falsifications followed as Stuart’s neck seemed to narrow and then stretch itself upwards. It became so long and thin I wondered how it could possibly support his now enlarged head. Amused by the many apparitions, I started to laugh until I was unable to stop. The only thing which managed to curb what turned into incessant yelping was Langham’s paranoid claim that I was sucking all the air from inside the room. Next thing I knew, all of us were collapsed in front of a large old black and white television set - marvelling as we witnessed programmes being transformed into vibrant 3D colour - way before such technology was ever invented. Characters appeared to jump out of the screen and into the room, making us feel like we were all connected to the unfolding drama. Our uncongenial host oversaw this early euphoria, repeatedly enticing us try more of the revolting mixture. Unsure of my natural limits, I sipped only the smallest of amounts, completely unable to get an animated image of a shrinking Alice in Wonderland out of my head. Conscious I was no longer able to trust my own senses, I began to worry about being out of control. This resulted in the rather peculiar decision to crawl over to the centre of the living room, lie down and launch into a series of vigorous squat thrusts.

  Next, for reasons known only to myself, I jumped up and started crashing around the house like a bird in a box. Darting around opening the curtains and windows of every room I could find. Upstairs I even had a go at forcing my way into the bedrooms of various bewildered tenants, driven by a maddening desire to switch on any electrical device I could get my clammy hands on. Justifiably, agitated by this deranged behaviour our host pulled me back into the living room and promised to ‘kick my fucking head in’ if I didn’t calm down. He demonstrated exactly how this would be achieved by booting several large holes into the living room door. All the amazing multi-coloured holographic images, which had been so distracting, turned monochrome. Storming out of room with Pennie and Langham scuttling behind him, Ilfracombe’s last remaining punk slammed the back door as if to make an emphatic statement and then disappeared into the darkness.

  To give him his due, when he did eventual
ly return with his little gang, clearly calmer and more centred than before; he marched over shook my hand and apologised for getting so upset.

  “Hey soz for having a go at you, you know what it’s like – my head was all over the place – that stuff fucks you up. Walking around has straightened me out a bit. I know where I am again. You have my word I’ll make it up to you.”

  “No worries, I shouldn’t have gone upstairs. I still feel a bit strange,” I replied.

  “Why don’t I make everyone some coffee?” Langham said, stringing those seven words together in that order for the first time in his life.

  As Langham went into the kitchen, Punky Pete innocuously asked if anyone fancied a light hearted game of dare before we all went home. The idea was he’d start off with a couple of easy challenges and then introduce a few tougher, more risky exercises before we reached the point where we all decided it was time to go. In Pennie’s company I was, like Langham, much more inclined to try things I wouldn’t ordinarily do. So foolishly I volunteered to be the first guinea pig – believing this would let Pennie know how fearless I was. New best buddy Punky Pete was delighted and instructed me to stand in the centre of the room, extend my little finger and see if I was capable of keeping it extended and motionless for a full two minutes. Ha – is this it? This is my so-called challenge - holding one finger out-stretched? Easy, I thought, until he unveiled a pair of garden shears and opened its two jagged blades across the fleshy part of my trembling finger. Christ, if this was the easiest dare – what would the others be? By pressing the cold steel blades across my finger right next to the knuckle, it was just enough to nip the skin and trap me alongside him in the middle of the room. The event was undeniably perverted by the remaining hallucinogenic concoction still in my system which continued to distort reality.