‘Thank you, Mr Feely,’ I said weakly, as he closed the door behind me.
As he’d taken my suitcase, I couldn’t see I had much option. I settled back on the worn leather seat, glanced up at the rear-view mirror and saw his pink face wreathed in smiles. He looked exactly like someone who has struck oil in their own back garden.
The Mount was a large, dilapidated house set in an enormous, unkempt garden where clumps of palm trees and a pair of recumbent lions with weather-worn faces suggested a former glory. He parked the taxi at the back of the house between a row of overflowing dustbins and a newish cement mixer, picked up my case, marched me round to the front entrance, across a gloomy hall and into a dining room full of the smell of cabbage and the debris of lunch.
He summoned a pale girl in a skimpy black dress to remove the greasy plates and uneaten vegetables from a table by the window, pulled out my chair for me and left me blinking in the strong sunlight that poured through the tall, uncurtained windows.
Across the uneven terrace the lions stared unseeing at groups of priests who strolled on the lawns or lounged in deckchairs. Against a background of daisies and dandelions or of striped canvas, their formal black suits looked just as out of place as the bamboo thicket and the Japanese pagoda I could see on the far side of the garden.
My soup arrived. I stared at the brightly coloured bits of dehydrated vegetable floating in the tepid liquid and recognised it immediately. Knorr Swiss Spring Vegetable. One of the many packets my mother uses ‘for handiness’. But she does mix it with cold water and leaves it to simmer on a low heat while she’s downstairs in the shop. My helping had not been so fortunate. It was full of undissolved lumps. I stirred it with my spoon and wondered what the chances were that Feely would return to supervise me personally while I ate it.
Fortunately he didn’t. My untouched bowl was removed without comment. I wasn’t expecting much of the main course, so I wasn’t too disappointed. Underneath a lake of thick gravy, overlooked by alternate rounded domes of mashed potatoes and mashed carrots, I found a layer of metamorphosed beef. It was tough and tasteless just like it is at home, but I did my best with it. The vegetables weren’t too bad and my plate with its pile of gristle was safely back in the kitchen without Feely having reappeared.
I looked around the shabby dining room as I tackled the large helping of prunes and custard that followed. There were now two very young girls, dressed identically in skimpy black skirts, crumpled white blouses and ankle socks, beginning to lay the tables from which lunch had just been cleared. Out of the corner of my eye I watched them brush away crumbs and place paper centrepieces over the stiffly starched cloths. The table next to mine was beyond such treatment. Well-anointed with gravy, the heavy fabric was dragged off unceremoniously to reveal underneath a worn and battered surface ringed with the pale marks of innumerable overflowing drinks.
I smiled to myself and thought of Ben, my oldest friend. How many rings had we wiped up from the oak-finish Formica of the Rosetta Lounge Bar in these last two months? He would miss me tomorrow when there was only Keith in the kitchen and no one to help him with the cleaning and the serving. The thought of doing the Rosetta job on my own appalled me. If it hadn’t been for Ben the whole episode would have been grim indeed.
‘Hi, Lizzie, what are you doing up so early?’
He greeted me as I stood disconsolately at the bus stop outside the Curzon Cinema waiting for a Cregagh bus. It was the first Monday in July, seven-thirty in the morning. I was sleepy and cross, my period had just started, and I was trying to convince myself it wasn’t all a horrible mistake.
‘Holiday job up in Cregagh.’
He looked me up and down, took in my black skirt, my surviving white school blouse and the black indoor shoes I’d worn at Victoria.
‘It wouldn’t by any chance be the Rosetta, would it?’ he asked, as he squinted down the road at an approaching double decker.
‘How did you guess?’
‘Read the same advertisement. That’s where I’m for too,’ he announced, grinning broadly. ‘When I get my scooter back, I can give you a lift. Save you a lot in bus fares.’
I could see how delighted he was and the thought of his company was a real tonic, but something was niggling at the back of my mind.
‘But weren’t you going to Spalding for the peas, Ben?’ I asked uneasily. ‘It’s far better paid.’
‘You’re right there,’ he nodded. ‘But Mum’s not well again,’ he said slowly. ‘She won’t see a specialist unless I keep on at her. You know what she’s like. So I cancelled and the Rosetta was all I could get. It could be worse,’ he grinned. ‘It could be the conveniences in Shaftesbury Square.’
When the bus came, we climbed the stairs and went right to the front so we could look into the branches of the trees the way we always did when we were little.
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, I counted silently, as I scraped up the last of my custard, but before the prune stones had told me who I was to marry, a cup of coffee descended in front of me and my future disappeared before my eyes.
The coffee was real coffee, freshly made Cona with a tiny carton of cream parked in the saucer. I could hardly believe it. I sipped slowly and went on watching the pale, dark-haired girls as they humped battered metal containers full of cutlery from table to table. At least we didn’t have that to do at the Rosetta. The restaurant only opened in the evenings, at lunchtime we only served bar food, sandwiches and things in a basket. But there were other jobs just as boring as the endless laying of tables.
Every morning at eight o’clock, we started on the mess the evening staff had to leave so they could run for the last bus from the nearby terminus. Stacks of dishes, glasses and ashtrays from the bar. After that the staircases and loos to sweep and mop before we started on lunches. That first day, the manageress set us to work separately and by four o’clock when we staggered off to the bus stop we were not only bored but absolutely exhausted. Next morning Ben had an idea.
‘C’mon, Lizzie, let’s do it all together. I’ve worked out a system.’
‘But what’ll we say if she catches us?’
‘Wait and see,’ he grinned.
I knew there was no use pressing him, because he’s good at keeping secrets. You could sooner get blood out of a stone.
We were standing under one of the Egyptian kings who provide the decor at the Rosetta with Ben holding a table on its side and me vacuuming under it, when she appeared.
‘I thought you were supposed to be doing the washing-up, Ben,’ she said crossly.
‘Oh, that’s all finished,’ said Ben cheerily. ‘But you were losing money on it.’
‘What? What d’you mean?’
She wrinkled up her brow, peered into the kitchen behind the bar, and saw it was all perfectly clean and tidy.
‘Time and motion,’ he said easily. ‘I did you a complete survey yesterday. No charge of course, it’s just a hobby of mine, but when I processed the results last night I really was shocked. . .’
He put the table aside, pulled out a chair and motioned to her to sit down.
‘You must never stand while talking to employees, it’s bad for your veins. Senior staff must safeguard their well-being, it’s one of the first principles of efficient management.’
Standing there with the vacuum cleaner in one hand and a clean duster in the other, I had an awful job keeping my face straight. Ben is a medical student,