Читать книгу Driving Jarvis Ham - Jim Bob - Страница 34

I’m taking Jennifer out on Friday!! (Baked potato and coleslaw)

‘Could we have a table by the window please?’ Jarvis had asked the rather handsome young waiter when he came in through the restaurant doors with Jennifer Fer as though he was some Hollywood big shot and it was a packed out exclusive and impossible to get a table in sort of restaurant.

It wasn’t.

‘Your usual table? Certainly sir. Can I take madam’s coat?’ the rather handsome young waiter said. Jennifer took off her green waterproof raincoat and handed it to the waiter, who looked around for a cloakroom or a coat hook on which to hang it.

There wasn’t one.

The not packed out not exclusive and not impossible to get a table in sort of restaurant had no cloakroom or coat hooks. It was a Mister Breakfast. The same Mister Breakfast Jarvis Ham had not long ago left to pursue his acting career (demonstrating remote control helicopters at a toyshop on the edge of a field between a farm shop and a garden centre on the A38 half a mile away). The same Mister Breakfast where I was still working. Still working, still not cooking. Still only Master Breakfast. Yup, you guessed it Poindexter. That rather handsome young waiter was me.

I showed them to a table by the window. Where the sun had faded the Formica tabletop and somebody had carved the word DIE into it. I would have pulled Jennifer Fer’s chair out for her but it was bolted to the floor. I folded her raincoat over the back of the chair, gave her and Jarvis laminated menus – also faded in the sun – and took out my order pad.

‘Drinks?’

I brought them their drinks and their meals and I acted like the perfect waiter and kept up the pretence that Jarvis was a local big shot to help him impress his girlfriend. And how could she not be impressed by a man who chose to walk her, in the pouring rain, dodging the speeding traffic and exploding puddles, along the busy slip road from the garden centre to one of Britain’s worst roadside restaurants for their first date?

As they were eating their dessert I refilled the tomato shaped plastic bottles and wiped the egg yolk and gravy off nearby tables so I could eavesdrop. They seemed to get on like a house on fire.

‘I think I’ll make acting my life,’ Jarvis said as he poured Jennifer Fer a fresh cup of tea and the lid of the stainless steel pot flipped open and tea spilled onto the table and flowed slowly into the grooves of the word DIE – you didn’t get this kind of stuff at the Ivy.

While Jennifer watched the tea Jarvis stared at her name badge like he was a sex pervert or something. She was still wearing her food hall uniform and still had tinsel in her hair. She’d been serving Christmas dinners all day in the garden centre’s vast food hall to coach loads of old ladies on turkey and tinsel days out and she hadn’t had time to change. She looked nothing like Princess Diana by the way.

‘It wouldn’t fit,’ Jennifer said, catching Jarvis staring at her name badge. ‘My actual name. It’s Jennifer Ferminalitano. So they shortened it. Plus, there was another Jennifer already working in the food hall. Although, you know, I think really they couldn’t pronounce it or be bothered to learn how. Do you know where the ladies is?’

‘Ferminalitano? Is she from somewhere exotic?’ I asked Jarvis while Jennifer was in the ladies.

‘Totnes.’

He’s funny isn’t he, Jarvis Ham. Look at him in the back of the car there now, reading his show business newspaper. Still daydreaming his daydreams. Look at him there, off in a world of his own. With his funny coloured hair and his hospital DJ glasses. Jarvis the loveable clown. Aw, isn’t he sweet. Maybe you even feel a bit sorry for him.

Don’t.

Seriously, don’t.

You’ll feel stupid later on.

Drivers rarely get carsick. It’s something to do with focusing on the road ahead and so not seeing things contrary to what their inner ear perceives. Something like that. Thinking about this next 1993 diary entry almost made me the exception that proved that rule.