The Waitress (14 page)

He waited for the barrage of insults and mockery.

‘What you do that for?’ asked Daz. ‘We were talking.’

‘Yeah,’ said Si. ‘Toss-head.’

‘Oh –’ he started. ‘I –’

‘Right,’ interrupted Daz. ‘I’ll put the music on. Si, you
and
Tone put the tree in its base. Matt, you untangle the lights.’

‘But –’ started Matt.

Daz stared at his watch. ‘Let’s synchronise watches. It’s now seven minutes past five.’ They synchronised watches. They all looked at Daz, who said, ‘Let’s GO.’

And go they did.

Jon sat cross-legged on the rug in the lounge and stared in disbelief at Sukie, who was sitting opposite him. He had not helped her re-write her CV for this sort of behaviour.

‘Pardon?’ he asked deliberately.

‘I,’ she repeated slowly and clearly, ‘am going to get inside your body.’

‘No you bloody aren’t.’

‘Not literally, Jon. I’m not a witch.’

‘Right.’

‘I’m talking metaphorically.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘We’ve done your breathing. It only took four weeks which is not a bad start. Now we need to work on your voice, the way you sit, the way you walk, the way you move your head when you talk, basically everything.’

‘Would you like to see me go to the toilet too?’

Ignoring him, she then did the oddest thing. Jon watched as she moved her arms into a shielding position across her stomach, sank her shoulders, curved her spine and lowered her chin. Then she spoke to him in a rather tinny voice.

‘Who do I look like?’ she asked.

He blinked. ‘My mother.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Uncanny,’ he agreed.

‘Notice anything about the way I’m sitting?’ she asked.

‘You look constipated.’

‘And?’

‘Uncomfortable.’

‘And?’

He frowned. ‘Young.’

‘And?’

‘Shy.’

‘And?’

‘Unhappy.’

She nodded.

‘I have something to tell you,’ she said.

He took a deep breath. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I’m mirroring you.’

He blanched. ‘Piss off,’ he said weakly. ‘I don’t look like that.’

‘You do. Without the curls and to-die-for body.’

He was speechless. He looked at her body and then slowly down at his own and realised that she was, indeed, sitting in exactly the same position as he was. Everything was the same, from the position of her fingers to the expression on her face.

‘So!’ she said brightly. ‘What’s the next step?’

‘Buying a gun,’ he whispered.

‘Nooo!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is good! Don’t you see? We have so much to work on!’

Jon could only nod, his head sinking with the effort.

‘It’s easy!’ Sukie continued. ‘You only have to be told how to change and you’ll look like James Dean.’

Jon’s head sank even lower. ‘Before or after the crash?’ he murmured.

Oh dear, thought Sukie. When she’d had this class at drama school, everyone had found it fascinating – but then, she supposed, none of them had moved, sat and talked like a suicidal mole.

She reminded him to breathe properly from his diaphragm and then made him focus his attention on making his voice come from where his breathing was coming from.

‘I can’t,’ he said immediately, from his throat.

‘Yes you can,’ she coaxed.

‘I hadn’t realised breathing and talking was multitasking,’ he groaned. ‘What if I need to walk at the same time? I’ll be fucked.’

‘Don’t be silly, Jon. Just focus.’

He did, and he spoke, very slowly at first, from his diaphragm instead of his throat. To his amazement, his voice came out lower, with more expression and more depth. He even sounded more manly.

‘Oh my God!’ he cried – in a deep voice. ‘You’re amazing!’

Sukie beamed. He beamed.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if we can have you walking like Clint Eastwood by Christmas.’

‘But that’s only a week away.’

‘OK,’ she conceded. ‘Burt Reynolds.’

Jon jumped up.

‘Okeydoke!’

Sukie held up a warning finger.

‘From your diaphragm.’

Jon breathed deeply and spoke with a base timbre that
made
him blush. ‘Okeydoke,’ he said and they both laughed.

After teaching Jon how to sound as sexy as she always knew he could, Sukie felt on a real high. Surely this should help her with today’s audition, she thought, as she walked from the bus stop to the casting studio.

She hadn’t been told much about the part; all she knew was that it was a medium-sized role in a costume drama. She’d worn her hair up, with ringlets falling around her cheeks, and a tight velvet bodice-style top over the most Aline of her skirts, finished off with lace-up ankle boots she’d borrowed from Katie.

She followed the signs for the audition and walked into a tiny office that was acting as a waiting room. It was completely empty. She had expected to find it brimming with women, all with that same unmistakable look of tired fear on their faces, but there was no one. The casting director’s assistant suddenly appeared.

‘Hi!’ beamed Sukie. ‘I’m Sukie Woodrow.’

The girl looked at her list, ticked off her name and then handed her a script.

‘You’re a prostitute from Lancashire, turn of the sixteenth century,’ she said.

‘Right.’

Sukie didn’t know what to panic about first. Her mind raced through all the people she’d ever known from Lancashire, then all the parts she’d ever seen from there. She had no idea what the accent was. If she’d had warning, she’d have practised. Phoned up contacts and asked for help. As it was, she’d have to wing it.

She sat down and started reading the script. With a
photographic
memory, the least she could do was get to know some of her lines.

‘Ready?’ asked the girl.

Sukie stared up at her. ‘I assumed I’d have to wait.’

‘No, we’re ahead of schedule actually. They’ve already been waiting for you for ten minutes.’

‘I’m not late am I?’ she asked, suddenly mortified.

‘No,’ said the girl, over-patiently, ‘they’re
ahead
of schedule.’

‘Right. Ready then.’

The girl nodded to the door to Sukie’s right.

‘Through there.’

Sukie walked to the door. She could do this. She would wow them all. She would walk in there and they would gasp in astonishment that the real thing – a real prostitute from Lancashire circa 1600 – should actually be standing in front of them.

She opened the door in the same way a prostitute from Lancashire would open the door. She stared at five people sitting behind a desk, in the same way a prostitute from Lancashire would stare. They stared back at her. And then, before she’d taken a step, she heard, like a passing bullet, the word, loud and clear – ‘No.’

She stopped, half-in the door.

Five people, intensely bored, looked away from her, some shaking their heads, others tutting, the rest seemingly too depressed to do even that. Silently, she backed out of the room and made a quiet exit. She stared at the door for a while and then turned round. She smiled at the casting director’s assistant and handed back the script.

‘Thanks,’ she smiled.

The casting director’s assistant sighed, disappointed, and Sukie walked out of the studio into the winter’s night.

The two young men sat in the chain restaurant, which had become their office. Both were excited and wanted to talk first.

‘OK,’ said the mule-like man. ‘How did the bank go?’

‘Great,’ said his good-looking friend. ‘They’ve upped the loan and actually looked impressed when I said that we were in with a chance – and then when you made that call mid-meeting, it clinched it.’

They both laughed.

‘Well, he just suddenly said, “It’s yours!”’ rushed his partner. ‘I couldn’t believe it! I thought I’d really shot myself in the foot by insulting his staff.’

They discussed what to do with the exceptionally rude staff – they were both in complete agreement – and then moved on to their next point.

‘I know this wonderful chef. Absolutely fantastic. Works in that gastro pub at the back of Hampstead, you remember?’ said the mule-like man.

‘Oh yeah, delicious,’ replied his good-looking friend.

‘Right. He’s a young guy, good-looking, very dedicated, full of energy.’

‘Let’s go and eat there, meet him together.’

‘OK. So it’s just him and a new waitress and we’re sorted.’

‘New waitress?’

‘Oh yes, just another thought.’

‘Hmm.’

‘You know my niece? The one I told you about the
other
day? My older brother’s daughter. She’s nearer my age than I am his?’

His mate nodded slowly. ‘Big boobs, no brain?’

‘That’s right! You remembered!’

‘How could I forget?’

‘Exactly! Just think how many more customers she’d be getting in!’

‘She needs a job, does she?’

His mate sighed. ‘Yes. But I do genuinely think she’ll be a worthwhile addition at the café.’

His partner nodded slowly. He was eternally grateful that his mate had stumped up 50 per cent of the deposit, but he had not ever envisaged Patsy being part of his staff.

‘If she doesn’t work out,’ said his friend, ‘you can always sack her.’

He smiled. It was nice to be working with someone who could read his mind.

They shook hands.

‘Congratulations, Mr Crichton.’

‘Congratulations to you, Mr Brown.’

Then they discussed their plans for the café itself. It had to be redesigned. They wanted a completely new look for a completely new beginning.

‘Thank goodness the bank was OK about us taking two weeks to renovate,’ said Mr Crichton. They looked at the plans laid out on the table in front of them. ‘We’d never have been able to completely rewire, rebuild and repaint it in only one week.’

They frowned hard at the plans a bit more.

‘But there’s absolutely no way we can survive if they
take
longer than two weeks,’ he continued. ‘Especially if we’re giving all the staff holiday pay.’

‘Two weeks it is, then.’

‘So we start on the day we complete, April the fifth.’

‘And we open as Crichton Brown’s Café/Bar/Restaurant on April the nineteenth.’

They lifted their beers and made a toast.

‘To Crichton Brown’s.’

‘To Crichton Brown’s.’

They finished their beer and grinned at each other over the table.

‘Merry Christmas,’ said Mr Crichton.

‘And a Happy New Year,’ said Mr Brown.

9

As soon as she reached her parents’ village, Katie found herself driving through dense fog. Great white swirls of it danced into the beam of her fog-lights and all she could see was the few feet in front of her. She gripped her steering wheel and drove at a steady two miles an hour, blinking rapidly at the thick mist ahead. When it cleared, she realised she’d quite liked the experience – she had no longer been the only one on the road who hadn’t known where the hell she was. And for the first time in the journey she hadn’t dwelt on the fact that since she’d last seen her family she’d probably lost her job and had cocked up the big date with Dan.

To the accompaniment of increasingly hysterical Christmas DJs, she’d spent her journey inventing different possible stories to explain the Great Date Disaster. Over the phone she’d been able to fob her mother off with evasive answers, but she knew that face-to-face she would be unable to manage it. For the past two hours she’d been finalising her favourite. It was simple, it was neat, it was clean: Dan had turned out to be a socialist. It was perfect. Her family wouldn’t require any more details.

Christmas was two days away. Usually, by now, it had worked its magic on Katie until she was longing to get home to the bosom of her family, but not this year. She knew that the level of bonhomie that usually turned her family’s bizarre idiosyncrasies into endearing quirks was just not in her, and there was little chance of it seeping in during the last ten minutes before she arrived.

In every other way though, she was ready for Christmas. She’d bought everyone’s presents, she’d wrapped everyone’s presents, she’d even put bows on everyone’s presents.

Having spent three Christmas seasons working at the café, Katie had had no false expectations about it raising her level of festive goodwill. She’d known that Alec would put up his usual decorations – a tangled mess of paper that managed to make the place look more depressing than usual; she’d known that he would bring out the old muzac tape of Christmas ditties; and she’d known that she would end up exhausted and depressed. Yet, amazingly, it had still disappointed.

But this year, on top of all that, Alec had been in a repulsively happy mood throughout December because he had managed to sell the café to two men ‘who had more money than sense’, one of whom, he’d kept reminding Katie, thought she was obnoxious. On a bad day she had found herself replaying the conversation she’d had with her future boss until she just wanted to end it all in case she ever spoke again. Unfortunately, she knew she was far too banal for suicide and, as of next year, she would have three months to find a new job.

Late December had hit the café hard this year. It suddenly lost most of its daily custom in the seasonal hurly
burly
, with few people having time to stop and enjoy coffees and chats, fewer still wanting to come into a place that stank so much of cheap failure. They could get that in the shops and at work.

Things hadn’t been much better in the kitchen.

Matt had spent his entire Christmas holidays in the café this year. In keeping with the festive spirit of the place, he had become an oppressive presence who, at every opportunity, reminded them in great detail of the hypocrisy of Christmas. Sukie had not been much better. This time last year she’d been performing in panto, the year before in rep at The Old Vic. This year she was continuing to fail at television auditions. And the chef had been his usual self.

So, Katie could hardly believe her luck when, on the day before she was to go home, a piece of Christmas cheer had entered her life. An exhausted-looking woman, who’d just finished her Christmas shopping and needed a quick pick-me-up, had also needed a good old moan. She was amazed, absolutely amazed, she told Katie, that there were no proper florist’s in the area. She’d needed some nice flowers to take to a dinner party tonight hosted by a woman who had specifically requested that no one bring her chocolates.