Authors: Danny Gillan
Scratch (15 page)
‘Thankfully not,’ I said. I had thought the place seemed remarkably clean, but assumed this was down to nine years of living alone having altered my perception with regard to what was and wasn’t an acceptable level of dirt and grime.
‘That would be because I was here at eight this morning to let the cleaners in. The toilets are fine.’
While this was a relief on an immediate ‘I don’t have to clean the toilets’ level, it also sent a cold, almost painful, shudder of dread through me.
‘We have to start at
eight
?’
The one, single, only (or at least ‘main’) benefit of working the shitty hours pub work offers had always been that you at least got a longer-lie in the mornings than the office drones. I’d started at 9.30 that morning, but Sammy had assured me that
was the regular start-time for staff, and I was getting a half-hour induction period for this one day only. No bastard mentioned anything about
eight
!
‘Don’t panic,’ Mark said. ‘
I
had to start at eight ‘
cos
I’m opening up today. Unless you decide to go for a badly-paid junior-management position you’ll be fine. The
start is only for us key-holders.’
‘Oh thank fuck,’ I said. ‘Tell you a secret?’
‘Go for it,’ Mark’s voice said.
I’d rather you didn’t
, his face said.
‘I murdered my radio-alarm clock last night.’
‘Okay.’ Mark smiled, a little nervously. ‘Good for you.’
‘I was a bit pissed, no reason to go into why here,’ I said.
‘Absolutely,’ Mark agreed.
‘But, you know. It was symbolic. That wee, white plastic bastard’s been waking me up at half-seven every morning for years. Mostly with Terry
Wogan
. I had to kill it.’ This made perfect sense to me.
‘Yeah, okay.’ Mark didn’t appear to understand, but he was young. ‘Anyway, we need to get going here, it’s opening time.’ He headed down towards the door.
‘No bother.’ I was eager to start my new, old, life.
Mark pulled down the bolt on the outside storm-doors and stopped them open with wooden wedges.
‘Are you ready for this?’ he asked when he’d returned behind the bar, where I stood, awaiting the throng.
‘And willing.’ I didn’t rub my hands together, but I wanted to.
The door was opened at
precisely.
The first customer didn’t appear until 11.45, which was a bit of an anti-climax. And all he wanted was a coffee, which Mark made and served.
I used the time to familiarise myself with the layout of the bar. I was delighted to note there was no Moosehead font. The only other real change was that, instead of being up on optics, the main spirits were lined up on a speed-rail set at waist-height below the bar, each shot to be poured by hand using wee steel measures. I figured I could handle that.
Mark was in the office and I had my back to the door trying to work out how to operate the PC-like till when our second customer arrived shortly after twelve.
‘Service bar-keep,’ a loud, familiar voice said. I turned to see Terry at the bar, grinning. ‘And be quick about it, my man.’
‘Pint, good sir? And might I add that sir is looking rather dapper today.’
Terry had clearly continued to make good use of his iron (and bath), and looked almost smart. Plus, he was clean-shaven and, unless the sickly-sweet stench clawing at the back of my throat was mistaken, wearing aftershave. He’d even brushed his hair. This wasn’t like him at all.
‘Why thank you. Just a latte for me, mate.’
This
really
wasn’t like him. I replaced the pint glass I had lifted automatically upon seeing Terry and moved to the cappuccino machine. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘I’m fine, why?’ He sounded confident but I knew Terry well enough to spot his embarrassment.
I held up the latte cup I’d filled with steamed milk as evidence. ‘Would this have something to do with your meeting with Patrick yesterday, by any chance? I take it you got my job?’
‘Yeah.’ Terry’s eyes dropped for a moment. ‘He seems to think I might have hidden talents.’
‘That would be
hidden
in the same way the Holy Grail, for example, is hidden?’
‘Very funny.’
‘
Hidden
like El
Dorado
?’
‘Aye, okay.’
‘Shangri-La?’
‘Fuck off and give me my coffee.’
Terry said this loudly enough to make Mark stick his head round the office door. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, obviously worried I was already giving customers cause to swear at me.
I laughed. ‘It’s fine, this is my mate Terry.’
Satisfied, Mark withdrew and returned to whatever he was pretending to do.
‘Is he your boss?’ Terry asked.
‘One of them, he’s the charge-hand. He’s all right.’
‘So it’s him and your mate Sammy, then?’
‘No, there’s an assistant manager I haven’t met yet, too. Apparently Sammy’s training her up to take over as manager when he goes back to his proper job. They’re due in later.’
‘Her?’ Terry said, which was both predictable and rather sad.
‘Yes Terry,
her
. And no, I don’t know what she looks like, if she’s single or if she likes big-boned men.’ I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before Terry found a way off that Egyptian river.
‘Let me know when you’ve found out. How did you get on with Simon on Sunday?’
‘It wasn’t him. It was Paula.’
‘Really? She asked you out? What happened?’ I had Terry’s full and undivided attention.
‘Nothing, she just wanted a chat. I think she’s struggling a bit. She ended up only staying for half-an-hour. She was half-cut.’ I decided not to mention the ‘failure’ stuff.
‘And? Are you going to see her again?’
‘She said she’d phone me.’
‘Did you get her number?’
‘No.’
‘Jesus! You are rubbish, Jim.’
‘Cheers.’
The door creaked open and a group of four office workers came in and sat at one of the tables against the side wall.
The door opened again and three more customers chose a table. Then another four did the same. Then a group of five, then a two, then a six.
Mark came out of the office. ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘Are you wanting any lunch, mate?’ he asked Terry. ‘You’d better order now if you do.’
‘Thanks but it feels too weird being in a pub without a beer in front of me. I’ll stop at Greggs for a chicken
pastie
. Jim, good luck in your new career!’
‘Same to you, mate.’
Terry saluted and headed for the door.
Mark handed me an order pad and a biro. ‘You take eleven, fourteen and nineteen, I’ll get the rest.’
‘Right, okay,’ I said. ‘Which ones are they, exactly?’
‘Check the plan,’ Mark said with a sigh. He pointed to a sheet of A4 tacked to the wall above the till, before hurrying to take his first order.
Pencilled on the paper was a badly drawn floor plan of The Basement showing all of the tables with their corresponding numbers. In fairness to Mark he had pointed the plan out to me while we were having our coffee and suggested it would be a good idea for me to spend some time studying it before we got busy. In fairness to me I’d forgotten.
A few seconds of frantic spatial geometry later, I’d established that Mark had allocated me the table of two, of three and one of the fours. He was breaking me in gently after all.
The routine was straightforward enough: take the order, open the table on the till and input the order, which then sent the food order to Abe in the kitchen and the drink order to the printer beside the till. I then poured the (mostly soft) drinks and served them, and waited for the food to appear at the kitchen pass for me to take to the table. It had seemed pretty fool proof when Mark explained it that morning.
I spent the next two hours proving otherwise.
The first hurdle came when I failed to separate the starters from the main courses on my first order, causing Abe to serve them all at the same time. ‘Fucking idiot,’ he said reasonably, when I explained my error.
Then I put the wrong food against the wrong table number in the till, screwing up both the order and two bills. ‘Fucking idiot,’ Abe said again, which was reiterated by Mark when I mentioned the problem with the bills.
I made a few of the traditional mistakes like spilling soup, leaving bits of cork floating in wine and dropping trays of glasses behind the bar, but they were only to be expected and barely raised a glance from Mark or Abe.
Accidentally hitting a customer across the back of the head with a large bottle of mineral water was more problematic, but fortunately the customer involved was in a forgiving mood, and happy to accept his table’s entire bill being written off as adequate recompense.
When asked how the crayfish special was served I thought replying ‘dead, hopefully’ would be a funny way of covering the fact that I had no idea. That table was happy with just the drinks being removed from their bill.
There was one table of two who waited almost an hour for their food. I’d been over several times explaining how busy the kitchen was and assuring them their order was on the way before I realised that I hadn’t put it through the till. They never got any food so it was only their drinks Mark had to comp.
Apart from these and a number of other things, it went fairly well.
Once the last lunch table had left Mark took a till reading. ‘Congratulations Jim,’ he said. ‘You only cost us 114 quid in comps. Well done.’
‘Well, you know. I try,’ I said. ‘Honestly mate, I’m sorry. Tomorrow will be better, I promise.’
‘I’d say we’d take it out of your wages but it’ll take you three days to earn that much, so we’ll let you off. Take a half-hour break, I’ll cover the bar.
Abe’ll
make you something to eat if you’re hungry.’
‘I think I’ll just grab a smoke then get a coffee,’ I said.
I was knackered. Last time I’d worked behind a bar I had spent most of the shift
behind
the bar, funnily enough, and even that had been tiring. All this running about taking orders and carrying plates was exhausting.
I stood outside the fire exit and lit a cigarette. It was funny, ever since telling my parents I’d stopped, every cigarette tasted so bloody good. I even felt a bit dizzy as I took another draw.
‘Got a light?’
I turned to see Abe’s wiry frame standing in the doorway, an unlit joint hanging from his lips. ‘Yeah, no bother.’ I proffered my clipper.
‘Cheers. Christ, I feel like shit. I was fucking caned last night, could not shift my arse out of bed this morning. Not a bad service, there.’ Abe handed back the lighter and blew a huge cloud of blue smoke into the air. ‘Could tell you’ve done it before.’
I had to assume he was taking the piss. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the hang of it again eventually.’
Abe looked at me quizzically. ‘I mean it; you did pretty well in there. How long since you did the job?’