‘I don’t like it, Sid.’
‘Well, you know what you can do then. What did you think you would be doing? Sitting in a little office in a pinstripe suit?’
‘It would make a change from some of the things I’ve been doing lately.’
But, of course, Sid has me firmly under his thumb and when I appear at the meeting at which he addresses the staff, I don’t even get a place on the platform. Miss Ruperts introduces him and it would make you sick to hear the way she goes on. She must have sworn off the stuff for a couple of hours beforehand because her hands are not shaking and every word comes over crystal clear. ‘Better days ahead’, ‘Exciting new prospects’, ‘Marching forward into the seventies’, are some of the golden oldies that come tripping off her tongue and these are only bettered by Sid who bounds to his feet and gives his all in true Funfrall manner. I am quite pleased to find that nobody registers any enthusiasm at all except Mrs Caitley who says ‘Hear! hear!’ periodically through Miss Ruperts’ address. I later learn that they were land girls together during the war and have been in tandem ever since. What a diabolical thought! Milk production must have dropped off something awful when the cows saw those two flexing their pinkies.
Sid eventually draws to a close, one of the hall porters farts and there is a ripple of applause. I personally think it is for the fart, which is quite an effective one. What is interesting is to observe the reaction of Sandra, June and Audrey now that they know who we are. The last two seem to think that they have been conned while Sandra is clearly impressed. All through Sid’s speech she gazes at him like he has just discovered how to make gold bars from fag ends and her contribution is a sizeable slice of the ripple of applause that greets the end of his ramble through cliché land.
On the other hand, she looks through me like an empty goldfish bowl and I feel it is going to be some time before I get another piece of nooky from that quarter. The fact that I am posted to the kitchens on the first part of my training course does not help matters. In my greasy clobber I hardly look likely to give Smoothiechops a run for his money.
Make no mistake about it. The people who work in the kitchens of large hotels are not likely to crop up in the Vogue social column very often. Some of them are rough. Very rough. If it was not for the frying pans I would have thought I was in the engine room of an Albanian minesweeper lent to the Irish navy. One bloke is tattooed from head to toe and keeps gulping down swigs of meths whilst there are two Spaniards who cannot understand a word of English and spend most of the time holding hands behind the chip slicer.
The female presence, apart from Mrs Caitley, is virtually non-existent and I, for one, am grateful. When you look around you it is easy to see why chefs are usually men–big, strong men. It is a tribute to Mrs Caitley’s muscle power that she can wield any authority at all and still have enough strength left for her marathon hassle with Mr ‘Superpoof’ Bentley–that is the name of the maitre d’hotel, or head waiter to you and me. Normally, the chef de cuisine has total authority over the choice and preparation of meals and Mr B. is pushing his luck in trying to get in on the act.
That is another thing you soon learn when you work in a hotel. Everybody is ‘Mr This’ and ‘Mr That’. There is none of the informality that used to prevail at the holiday camp. This is presumably because everybody in the business seems to have worked their way up from the bottom and is very jealous of preserving their status.
And talking of working your way up from the bottom, I have never seen so many concrete parachutes in my life. I have nothing against queers, except the toe of my boot if they become too persistent, but really! After peeling millions of potatoes and scraping blackened cooking pots in a temperature of over a hundred degrees, and in an atmosphere so steamy that you can hardly see the dripping walls, the last thing you fancy is being touched up by some joker as you bend over to sluice your greens.
My dismissal to the kitchen does at least help my relationship with June and Audrey. Like everyone else on the staff, they trust me less than a Vietnamese threepenny bit but at least when they see me crawling along the corridors towards my new room–yes, Sid has moved into the management suite and I have been relegated to the ‘Penthouse Club’ or attic, as it is also known–they realise that being a nark is not all easy sailing.
‘Trying a bit of work for a change, are you?’ says June, as we bump into each other on my first evening.
‘Don’t be like that. I’m knackered.’
She is all tarted up and obviously about to grab a bit of the gay night life that Hoverton has to offer before it closes down at half past nine.
‘Why aren’t you downstairs with your mate?’
‘You ask him that. He wants me to learn the ropes. At the moment I feel like hanging myself with one of them.’
‘It’s not nice down there, is it?’ says June with a hint of sympathy creeping into her voice. ‘You have to be careful when you come out into the cold. It’s easy to catch a chill.’
‘I’ll remember that. Where are you going?’
‘They have a dance down at the Pier on Fridays. Do you fancy coming?’
‘I’m not much of a dancer at the best of times and tonight I couldn’t stand up for the national anthem. Thanks anyway. Another time.’
‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘Oh yes. Just fagged out, that’s all.’
I let myself into my room and notice her registering its number.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she says. ‘Bring you a little surprise. Who are you sharing with?’
‘Nobody at the moment. I think the bloke is on holiday or evaporated.’
‘Oh.’ Her face lights up. ‘See you.’
She trips off down the corridor and I peel off my clobber, have a sluice down in the washbasin and climb on to the bed to listen to the plumbing. It is just like being back at home with the sloping rafters inches from my nose.
I must have drifted off because the next thing I am aware of is a burst of laughter in the corridor and the sound of whispering and giggling right outside my door. I open my eyes as the door knob turns and June and Audrey come in wearing long nightdresses with frills at neck and hem. Very nice too. What is an additional peeper-bonus is the playmate they have brought with them. A coloured girl I have been quietly eyeing since I crossed the threshold. She is wearing a black shortie nightdress and carrying a bottle of brown ale.
‘Have you got an opener?’ she says and all three of them burst into fits of giggles.
‘You had a good evening, did you?’ I say, waking up fast and slipping my hand under the sheets to adjust periscope.
‘We brought you a present,’ says the coloured chick.
‘Which one?’ I say, looking from one to the other of them. More giggles.
‘This is Carmen,’ says Audrey. ‘She said she’d like to meet you.’
‘I never did.’
‘You did.’
‘I never.’
I imagine that Carmen is blushing but it is difficult to tell.
‘Anyhow,’ I say gallantly to cover her embarrassment, ‘the brown ale is for me, is it?’
‘Yes. We thought you needed building up.’ More giggles. If the sheets were transparent, they might change their minds.
‘I’ll have to open it, won’t I? Look the other way, girls.’
I grab a handy towel and drape it around my shapely loins as I slide out of bed. I don’t have an opener but I reckon I can knock the top off on the edge of the table–that and a few other things.
‘Hold