Collected Short Stories

by Jeffrey Archer

  My ears pricked up as I anticipated his version of the story of what had actually happened on the night of that pre-war backgammon championship over thirty years before.

  “Really?” I said, innocently.

  “Oh, yes,” said Edward. “It was not as simple as you might think. Just before the war Harry was let down very badly by his business partner, who not only stole his money, but for good measure his wife as well. The very week that he was at his lowest he won the club backgammon championship, put all his troubles behind him and, against the odds, made a brilliant comeback. You know, he’s worth a fortune today. Now, wouldn’t you agree that that would make one hell of a story?”

  À LA CARTE

  Arthur Hapgood was demobilized on November 3, 1946. Within a month he was back at his old workplace on the shop floor of the Triumph factory on the outskirts of Coventry.

  The five years spent in the Sherwood Foresters, four of them as a quartermaster seconded to a tank regiment, only underlined Arthur’s likely postwar fate, despite his having hoped to find more rewarding work once the war was over. However, on returning to England he quickly discovered that in a “land fit for heroes” jobs were not that easy to come by, and although he did not want to go back to the work he had done for five years before war had been declared, that of fitting wheels on cars, he reluctantly, after four weeks on welfare, went to see his former factory manager at Triumph.

  “The job’s yours if you want it, Arthur,” the factory manager assured him.

  “And the future?”

  “The car’s no longer a toy for the eccentric rich or even just a necessity for the businessman,” the factory manager replied. “In fact,” he continued, “management is preparing for the ‘two-car family.’”

  “So they’ll need even more wheels to be put on cars,” said Arthur forlornly.

  “That’s the ticket.”

  Arthur signed on within the hour, and it was only a matter of days before he was back into his old routine. After all, he often reminded his wife, it didn’t take a degree in engineering to screw four knobs on to a wheel a hundred times a shift.

  Arthur soon accepted the fact that he would have to settle for second best. However, second best was not what he planned for his son.

  Mark had celebrated his fifth birthday before his father had even set eyes on him, but from the moment Arthur returned home he lavished everything he could on the boy.

  Arthur was determined that Mark was not going to end up working on the shop floor of a car factory for the rest of his life. He put in hours of overtime to earn enough money to ensure that the boy could have extra tuition in math, general science, and English. He felt well rewarded when the boy passed his eleven-plus and won a place at King Henry VIII Grammar School, and that pride did not falter when Mark went on to pass five O-levels and two years later added two A-levels.

  Arthur tried not to show his disappointment when, on Mark’s eighteenth birthday, the boy informed him that he did not want to go to a university.

  “What kind of career are you hoping to take up then, lad?” Arthur enquired.

  “I’ve filled out an application form to join you on the shop floor just as soon as I leave school.”

  “But why would you—”

  “Why not? Most of my friends who’re leaving this term have already been accepted by Triumph, and they can’t wait to get started.”

  “You must be out of your mind.”

  “Come off it, Dad. The pay’s good, and you’ve shown that there’s always plenty of extra money to be picked up with overtime. And I don’t mind hard work.”

  “Do you think I spent all those years making sure you got a first-class education just to let you end up like me, putting wheels on cars for the rest of your life?” Arthur shouted.

  “That’s not the whole job, and you know it, Dead.”

  “You go there over my dead body,” said his father. “I don’t care what your friends end up doing, I only care about you. You could be a solicitor, an accountant, an army officer, even a schoolmaster. Why should you want to end up at a car factory?”

  “It’s better paid than teaching, for a start,” said Mark. “My French teacher once told me that he wasn’t as well off as you.”

  “That’s not the point, lad—”

  “The point is, Dad, I can’t be expected to spend the rest of my life doing a job I don’t enjoy just to satisfy one of your fantasies.”

  “Well, I’m not going to allow you to waste the rest of your life,” said Arthur, getting up from the breakfast table. “The first thing I’m going to do when I get in to work this morning is see that your application is turned down.”

  “That isn’t fair, Dad. I have the right to—”

  But his father had already left the room, and did not utter another word to the boy before leaving for the factory.

  For over a week father and son didn’t speak to each other. It was Mark’s mother who was left to come up with the compromise. Mark could apply for any job that met with his father’s approval, and as long as he completed a year at that job he could, if he still wanted to, reapply to work at the factory. His father for his part would not then put any obstacle in his son’s way.

  Arthur nodded. Mark also reluctantly agreed to the solution.

  “But only if you complete the full year,” Arthur warned solemnly.

  During those last days of the summer vacation Arthur came up with several suggestions for Mark to consider, but the boy showed no enthusiasm for any of them. Mark’s mother became quite anxious that her son would end up with no job at all until, while helping her slice potatoes for dinner one night, Mark confided that he thought hotel management seemed the least unattractive proposition he had considered so far.

  “At least you’d have a roof over your head and be regularly fed,” his mother said.

  “Bet they don’t cook as well as you, Mom,” said Mark as he placed the sliced potatoes on the top of the Lancashire hotpot. “Still, it’s only a year.”

  During the next month Mark attended several interviews at hotels around the country without success. It was then that his father discovered that his old company sergeant was head porter at the Savoy: Immediately Arthur started to pull a few strings.

  “If the boy’s any good,” Arthur’s old comrade-in-arms assured him over a pint, “he could end up as a head porter, even a hotel manager.” Arthur seemed well satisfied, even though Mark was still assuring his friends that he would be joining them in a year to the day.

  On September 1, 1959, Arthur and Mark Hapgood traveled together by bus to Coventry station. Arthur shook hands with the boy and promised him, “Your mother and I will make sure it’s a special Christmas this year when they give you your first leave. And don’t worry—you’ll be in good hands with ‘Sarge.’ He’ll teach you a thing or two. Just remember to keep your nose clean.”

  Mark said nothing and returned a thin smile as he boarded the train. “You’ll never regret it …” were the last words Mark heard his father say as the train pulled out of the station.

  Mark regretted it from the moment he set foot in the hotel.

  As a junior porter he started his day at six in the morning and ended at six in the evening. He was entitled to a fifteen-minute midmorning break, a forty-five-minute lunch break, and another fifteen-minute break around midafternoon. After the first month had passed he could not recall when he had been granted all three breaks on the same day, and he quickly learned that there was no one to whom he could protest. His duties consisted of carrying guests’ suitcases up to their rooms, then lugging them back down again the moment they wanted to leave. With an average of three hundred people staying in the hotel each night, the process was endless. The pay turned out to be half what his friends were getting back home, and, since he had to hand over all his tips to the head porter, however much overtime Mark put in, he never saw an extra penny. On the only occasion he dared to mention it to the head porter, he was met with the words, “Your time wi
ll come, lad.”

  It did not worry Mark that his uniform didn’t fit or that his room was six feet by six feet and overlooked Charing Cross Station, or even that he didn’t get a share of the tips; but it did worry him that there was nothing he could do to please the head porter—however clean he kept his nose.

  Sergeant Crann, who considered the Savoy nothing more than an extension of his old platoon, didn’t have a lot of time for young men under his command who hadn’t done their national service.

  “But I wasn’t eligible to do national service,” insisted Mark. “No one born after 1939 was called up.”

  “Don’t make excuses, lad.”

  “It’s not an excuse, Sarge. It’s the truth.”

  “And don’t call me ‘Sarge.’ I’m ‘Sergeant Crann’ to you, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Crann.”

  At the end of each day Mark would return to his little box-room with its small bed, small chair, and tiny chest of drawers, and collapse exhausted. The only picture in the room—Hals’s The Laughing Cavalier—was on the calendar that hung above Mark’s bed. The date of September 1, 1960, was circled in red to remind him when he would be allowed to rejoin his friends at the factory back home. Each night before falling asleep he would cross out the offending day like a prisoner making scratch marks on a wall.

  At Christmas, Mark returned home for a four-day break, and when his mother saw the general state of the boy she tried to talk his father into allowing Mark to give up the job early, but Arthur remained implacable.

  “We made an agreement. I can’t be expected to get him a job at the factory if he isn’t responsible enough to keep to his part of a bargain.”

  During the break Mark waited for his friends outside the factory gate until their shift had ended and listened to their stories of weekends spent watching football, drinking at the pub, and dancing to the Everly Brothers. They all sympathized with his problem and looked forward to his joining them in September. “It’s only a few more months,” one of them reminded him cheerfully.

  Far too quickly, Mark was on the journey back to London, where he continued unwillingly to cart cases up and down the hotel corridors for month after month.

  Once the English rain had subsided, the usual influx of American tourists began. Mark liked the Americans, who treated him as an equal and often tipped him a shilling when others would have given him only sixpence. But whatever the amount Mark received, Sergeant Crann would still pocket it with the inevitable, “Your time will come, lad.”

  One such American for whom Mark ran around diligently every day during his two-week stay ended up presenting the boy with a ten-shilling note as he left the front entrance of the hotel.

  Mark said, “Thank you, sir,” and turned around to see Sergeant Crann standing in his path.

  “Hand it over,” said Crann as soon as the American visitor was well out of earshot.

  “I was going to the moment I saw you,” said Mark, passing the note to his superior.

  . “Not thinking of pocketing what’s rightfully mine, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t,” said Mark. “Though God knows I earned it.”

  “Your time will come, lad,” said Sergeant Crann without much thought.

  “Not while someone as mean as you is in charge,” replied Mark sharply.

  “What was that you said?” asked the head porter, veering around.

  “You heard me the first time, Sarge.”

  The clip across the ear took Mark by surprise.

  “You, lad, have just lost your job. Nobody, but nobody, talks to me like that.” Sergeant Crann turned and set off smartly in the direction of the manager’s office.

  The hotel manager, Gerald Drummond, listened to the head porter’s version of events before asking Mark to report to his office immediately. “You realize I have been left with no choice but to fire you,” were his first words once the door was closed.

  Mark looked up at the tall, elegant man in his long, black coat, white collar, and black tie. “Am I allowed to tell you what actually happened, sir?” he asked.

  Mr. Drummond nodded, then listened without interruption as Mark gave his version of what had taken place that morning, and also disclosed the agreement he had entered into with his father. “Please let me complete my final ten weeks,” Mark ended, “or my father will only say I haven’t kept my end of our bargain.”

  “I haven’t got another job vacant at the moment,” protested the manager. “Unless you’re willing to peel potatoes for ten weeks.”

  “Anything,” said Mark.

  “Then report to the kitchen at six tomorrow morning. I’ll tell the third chef to expect you. Only if you think the head porter is a martinet, just wait until you meet Jacques, our maître chef de cuisine. He won’t clip your ear, he’ll cut it off.”

  Mark didn’t care. He felt confident that for just ten weeks he could face anything, and at five-thirty the following morning he exchanged his dark blue uniform for a white top and blue and white check trousers before reporting for his new duties. To his surprise the kitchen took up almost the entire basement of the hotel, and was even more of a bustle than the lobby had been.

  The third chef put him in the corner of the kitchen, next to a mountain of potatoes, a bowl of cold water, and a sharp knife. Mark peeled through breakfast, lunch, and dinner and fell asleep on his bed that night without even enough energy left to cross a day off his calendar.

  For the first week he never actually saw the fabled Jacques. With seventy people working in the kitchens Mark felt confident he could pass his whole period there without anyone being aware of him.

  Each morning at six he would start peeling, then hand over the potatoes to a gangling youth called Terry, who in turn would dice or cut them according to the third chef’s instructions for the dish of the day. Monday sauté, Tuesday mashed, Wednesday French-fried, Thursday sliced, Friday roast, Saturday croquette … Mark quickly worked out a routine that kept him well ahead of Terry and therefore out of any trouble.

  Having watched Terry do his job for over a week Mark felt sure he could have shown the young apprentice how to lighten his workload quite simply, but he decided to keep his mouth closed: opening it might only get him into more trouble, and he was certain the manager wouldn’t give him a second chance.

  Mark soon discovered that Terry always fell badly behind on Tuesday’s shepherd’s pie and Thursday’s Lancashire hotpot. From time to time the third chef would come across to complain, and he would glance over at Mark to be sure that it wasn’t him who was holding the process up. Mark made certain that he always had a spare tub of peeled potatoes by his side so that he escaped censure.

  It was on the first Thursday morning in August (Lancashire hotpot) that Terry sliced off the top of his forefinger. Blood spurted all over the sliced potatoes and onto the wooden table as the lad began yelling hysterically.

  “Get him out of here!” Mark heard the maître chef de cuisine bellow above the noise of the kitchen as he stormed toward them.

  “And you,” he said, pointing at Mark, “clean up mess and start slicing rest of potatoes. I ’ave eight hundred hungry customers still expecting to feed.”

  “Me?” said Mark in disbelief. “But—”

  “Yes, you. You couldn’t do worse job than idiot who calls himself trainee chef and cuts off finger.” The chef marched away, leaving Mark to move reluctantly across to the table where Terry had been working. He felt disinclined to argue while the calendar was there to remind him that he was down to his last twenty-five days.

  Mark set about a task he had carried out for his mother many times. The clean, neat cuts were delivered with a skill Terry would never learn to master. By the end of the day, although exhausted, Mark did not feel quite as tired as he had in the past.

  At eleven that night the maître chef de cuisine threw off his hat and barged out of the swinging doors, a sign to everyone else they could also leave the kitchen once everything that was their
responsibility had been cleared up. A few seconds later the doors swung back open and the chef burst in. He stared around the kitchen as everyone waited to see what he would do next. Having found what he was looking for, he headed straight for Mark.

  “Oh, my God,” thought Mark. “He’s going to kill me.”

  “How is your name?” the chef demanded.

  “Mark Hapgood, sir,” he managed to splutter out.

  “You waste on ‘tatoes, Mark Hapgood,” said the chef. “You start on vegetables in morning. Report at seven. If that crétin with ’alf finger ever returns, put him to peeling ’tatoes.”

  The chef turned on his heel even before Mark had the chance to reply. He dreaded the thought of having to spend three weeks in the middle of the kitchens, never once out of the maître chef de cuisine’s sight, but he accepted that there was no alternative.

  The next morning Mark arrived at six for fear of being late, and spent an hour watching the fresh vegetables being unloaded from Covent Garden market. The hotel’s supply manager checked every case carefully, rejecting several before he signed a receipt to show that the hotel had received over three thousand pounds’ worth of vegetables. An average day, he assured Mark.

  The maître chef de cuisine appeared a few minutes before seven-thirty, checked the menus, and told Mark to score the Brussels sprouts, trim the French beans, and remove the coarse outer leaves of the cabbages.

  “But I don’t know how,” Mark replied honestly. He could feel the other trainees in the kitchen edging away from him.

  “Then I teach you,” roared the chef. “Perhaps only thing you learn is if hope to be good chef, you able to do everyone’s job in kitchen, even ’tato peeler’s.”

  “But I’m hoping to be a …” Mark began and then thought better of it. The chef seemed not to have heard Mark as he took his place beside the new recruit. Everyone in the kitchen stared as the chef began to show Mark the basic skills of cutting, dicing, and slicing.