Читать книгу Sex, Lies & Crazy People - John Hickman - Страница 11

Dad looked desperate. His nerves were at breaking point. Panic showed in his eyes. “We’ve been open now for a whole three weeks. Bills are mounting and we haven’t enough guests to paddle a canoe. I feel like Errol Flynn trying to reconcile his gross habits with his net

income.”

I was perplexed. Dad had supported me growing up as surely as Prometheus the

Titan, in Greek mythology had shaped man from clay. And why not? Ex-Lancaster bomber pilot, WW2 hero, genuine and honest, my dad. Had he asked me to knit him wings to fly, I would only have asked, what colour? But I had no ideas how to help him fill the

hotel, quickly.

Dad groaned. “It’s pretty evident the flood-lights and striped window canopies are not enough.” He paused and relit his pipe. “As customers aren’t coming to us, I’ll have to go and get them. It’s a case of Mohammed and the mountain.” He sighed. “I’ll call on the local business people to try and drum up some business.”

Frocked up in his pinstripe London suit, dress shirt and RAF necktie he certainly looked the part.

From one end of town to the other he promised ad nauseam, “Please, come and view the Harewood Hotel.” And then the clincher, “Bring your family. Drinks, even cocktails and canapés are on the house.”

Gran looked worried. “I’m no good at this up market stuff. What’s involved with these canapés?”

“Finger foods are easy, Mother. Even John can take care of it.” Dad turned to me. “You don’t need to be a patisserie chef to put something edible on a cocktail stick or sit a cube of cheese astride a biscuit.”

“Amen, to that,” I said with evident sarcasm.

Soon a steady stream of visitors came to view the new, old, Harewood Hotel.

Dad created guest lists. “We’ll fete them according their size and style of business and what might be derived from their friendship and support.”

Lists in hand he leaned into the kitchen. I looked up from opening a stubborn tin of

sardines. He appeared excited, pipe in hand, his salesman’s beam directed at me. “Those cocktail sausages went down a fair treat. I’ll need another plate. And more gherkins, and more cheese, and more sardine thingies.”

“It’s turning into quite a party,” said a worried Gramps.

“It’s not a party, Father. We’re not enjoying ourselves. This is work.”

“Looks like a party to me, Son,” Gran snorted from the washing up sink.

“Yes, a group of people we don’t know, standing around drinking our grog, and

eating our food. Pretty well sounds like a party to me, too,” Gramps scowled.

Dad reappeared. He looked even more excited than before. “And olives; plain and stuffed.”

“Poor bloody, Olive,” Gran said, “hasn’t she been stuffed about enough?”

Despite my grandparents’ concerns it wasn’t long before faces we recognised came back for a second and third time. And more importantly they paid. Dad soon had enough money in the kitty to pay the more pressing bills.

“At last we’re on the up, and up,” Dad declared at the end of the month.

The effect of his words on my grandparents was euphoric. Gramps added a kick to his step while Gran rallied in the kitchen without her usual sulks. With Pandy at her side

twiddling the knobs, together they regulated our gas a fair treat.

Kitchen wise Dad fared worse than me as he didn’t have the smallest clue. “At times I wonder if he knows anything at all about kitchens, Gramps,” I pondered aloud. “He really doesn’t have the faintest idea you know.”

Gramps chuckled. “You’re right. He’s not quite on the same pond as the other ducks yet.”

“When he drapes a lettuce leaf across an empty plate it’s a light salad in progress,”

I replied flippantly.

“Normally he’d give the lettuce leaf his middle finger. Then hurl it in the bin and not bother. In your dad’s new world an uncut tomato or a hunk of cheese might herald a

Mediterranean flavour in the offing,” Gramps added. “Come to that if pressed, he might even open a can of something and reheat.”

“Anything but actually cook, you mean?”

“Yes. What he needs are hotel guests who don’t want to eat anything.”

“He’d prefer to go hungry than prepare a meal himself,” Gran sighed. “He’s always been that way.”

When Dad was able to steer well clear of the kitchens his spirits visibly soared.

“Courtesy of your Gran we have inviting kitchen aromas this morning.” Dad lifted his chin and did an exaggerated sniff that reminded me of the old Bisto gravy advertisements ‘Ah! Bisto’ . “Bacon frying at breakfast, onions browning in a pan from about mid morning. Guaranteed to stir anyone’s digestive juices.” Dad beamed his pleasure. “Well done, Mother. It’s the edible equivalent of an orchestra tuning up. How’s about the simmer of a mild curry later in the day?”

“I don’t do curries.”

“Why not, Gran?” Pandy asked.

“Better ask your Gramps.”

Gramps was thoughtful. “They’re too hot going down, and even hotter on the way out, that’s why, Sweetheart.”

Pandy giggled.

“But I did say mild, Mother.”

“Mild or not, it’s like having a Bunsen burner in your knickers,” Gran was thoughtful for a moment, “but I’ll do liver and bacon, instead.”

When we were without guests it was only family being enticed by Gran’s smell-a-vision. Dad considered heady beckoning aromas like fresh bread baking to attract more trade but that was frowned on by Gran. When she saw the direction Dad was headed, she

panicked, and Gran being our only cook, meant we adopt an instant policy of buying-in fresh bread. We were about to move on when Gran intervened. “But not that new fangled sliced bread. You can’t use that.”

I was dumbfounded. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not as good and fresh as uncut bread,” Gran explained, “at home Gramps always cuts whole loaves with our bread knife.”

I looked at Dad. He looked at me.

In his eyes I could see that he needed support. Any support.

“Gran,” I paused until I had her attention. “Maybe Gramp’s eyesight is reason enough to doubt how uniform those slices will be.”

Dad recovered well. “John’s right. Irregular shaped wedges may pose a challenge in our new high-class world, Mother. Added to the difficulty of them getting stuck in the automatic toaster.”

“Not easily disguised by mood lighting,” I quipped.

“At home we toasted our bread under the grill or by the fire,” Gran retaliated, “we’ve never had a toaster. No time for them.”

“What if I draw lines for you, Gramps, with my school ruler?” Pandy suggested.

“Splendid idea, Sweetheart,” replied Gramps with a huge wink at Pandy.

This is like the blind leading the blind, I thought.

After much coaxing, it was decided to use sliced bread and not whole loaves.

Dad smiled his rally to the flag smile. “Come, come, family. The job, without

sentimentality or favour, is to entice patrons to eat here. To achieve that we’ll need to

prepare nothing but the freshest of ingredients for consumption. Anything that walks, hops, runs, crawls, swims or flies, and more besides if that’s what diners want.”

Gran went into meltdown, again.

Dad took a deep breath. “Relax, Mother, we don’t need to be an abattoir ourselves.”

“Do you mean dead animals, as in really dead?” Beau asked, who’d overheard our

conversation in part, while struggling with a sack of spuds nearly as large as himself and his cane.

Dad glared. “Is there any other kind of dead?”

Beau looked confused. Dad continued, “Only fresh dead as in their pulses recently petered out,” he reinforced, and then as an afterthought, “and only fresh squeezed fruit juices will be served at breakfast, nothing that’s been preserved.”

“Wow! Aren’t we the fucking Windsors,” Gramps exclaimed.

Beau was impressed too. “You know, Gov, in all the years I’ve been here I’ve not seen anything that moved outside of what came in an A10 sized tin.”

When he realised animals, alive or dead, may threaten his quiet basement existence he added, “But beware, kind sirs, should there be a full moon on the wane.”

“Or any other supernatural crap,” Gramps muttered, in a stage whisper that could be clearly heard twenty yards away.

Beau looked hurt. “I’ll have you know that frequencies are external sources. They’re like vibrating radio bands.”

“You’d best go off and have a vibration with yourself then,” Gramps glared at him.

Beau shrugged and continued with the spuds.

“We need to get on. Next on our agenda is tea bags,” Dad announced from his notes.

Gran shifted uncomfortably. “I refuse to use them.”

We all looked at Gran. This time I stayed quiet. But someone had to ask.

It was Pandy. “Why, Gran?”

“Because they’re not proper tea, Sweetheart. They’re sweepings from the floor, and mark my words, they’ll never catch on. Not here. English people expect a decent cuppa not a new-fangled useless bag full of rubbish.” Her voice rose, “Next you’ll be adding milk and sugar last.”

Pandy frowned.

“Do you know how Moses makes his tea?” Gramps asked.

Dad sighed.

“Hebrews it.”

Dad ignored Gramps and explained for my sister’s benefit. “What your Gran means, Pandy, is only foreigners and English royalty put milk and sugar in last. We always put milk and sugar on the bottom, the tea is on the top, when poured English style.”

“That’s because English royalty are foreigners,” Gramps scowled, “they’re related to that German bastard—Kaiser Wilhelm. When England entered the First World War they changed their name from the house of Hanover to Windsor to promote their English

heritage.”

“Quite right, Dad. Just as the Battenburgs became the Mountbatten’s. Few Britons

realise our Royal family’s first language was German.”

Gran sighed, it was another of her deepest sighs. “Not exactly a case of Rule

Britannia then.”

Gramps brightened. “I love our Queen. I always take my time when licking her stamps.”

“Next you’ll be saying that’s why Liz is always smiling,” Gran smirked.

The conversation turned to Gran needing assistance in the kitchen.

“I can’t be expected to look after Pandy and three grown men, and run a hotel kitchen at my age,” Gran said.

“Quite right, Mother, and I shouldn’t have to cook because I have a penis.”

“Good,” I snapped back. “I’ve got one of them. So the same rule applies to me.”

Dad paused. He fumbled about before he spoke. “John, you’re assigned to the kitchen to assist your Gran. And that includes buying the food and preparation of the menus as well.”

I was horrified. Dad resumed, “Surely you can see, Son, that your Gran can’t possibly take on all of this alone.”

“But, Dad, I’m incapable of successfully cracking an egg, let alone preparing a meal.”

Dad delivered a smirk that fluttered short of a smile. “We’ve a less than assured start then.”

With a half-laugh, he added. “You’d better get cracking.”

Dad chuckled as he saw the humour in his comment, “Get it?”

I was unhappy and it showed. “I get it, but I’m not amused. And as for being relegated to the kitchens. I’m dumbfounded.”

Dad held his hands out sideways in a gesture. “I’ve made my decision based on the only plausible alternative. Who else if not you?”

“Why not you?”

“You’re younger than me, you can better adapt.”

Hopeful that sanity might return after he’d given his decision further thought,

I succumbed. “All right, then. But be warned. I’ll approach my new role with…” I tried to think of a suitable response…

“The enthusiasm of a condemned man being sent to the gallows,” Dad offered with a grimace.

“I fear my effort will be likened to an unaided blind man throwing darts at a board.”

“You’ve plenty of time, Son. If life begins at forty you’re only half-way.”