The Royal Hotel
Chapter One
three
Breakfast was already underway in the sandwich shop as Brian came back with the papers. One guy was struggling out of the shop with three polystyrene cups balanced on a big paper bag, and there were another two or three inside the shop placing their orders. The smell of bacon wafted across, and his stomach growled as he turned the corner, heading towards the vennel that would take him through the façade of shops to the hotel's entrance.
He stepped around the remains of the foam as he went. Up close, the tree looked worse than he'd imagined. Cracked and charred; the heat must have been fierce. He shook his head, went on through.
The Royal Hotel was built out of one of the old townhouses that lined the upper end of the high street. It sat on the corner, above the shops, looking out over the junction. Although it had been a hotel for years, it was one of those buildings that would always feel like a conversion from the inside; there was something about the scale of things that gave it away. The ceilings, just that bit too high. The marble fireplace, so grand that it made the functional, sturdy furniture look even cheaper. The majestic sweep of the stairwell, complete with chandelier. A modern replacement, of course. The original would have been crystal rather than glass.
The place felt like an old lady who'd fallen on hard times. The string of pearls around her neck might be convincing fakes, but with a real fur coat on top of it all. Certainly, it had that air of grandeur. An inexplicable presence that implied a nobly taken - if reluctant - decision to descend a couple of rungs on the social ladder.
The building retained that on its own, even if it had been forcibly converted into a second rate guest house in drag.
Brian planted the stubby key into the hole in the middle of the brass plate and clonked the lock open. The door opened with that familiar waft of Brasso, furniture polish, and the musty undercurrent of something slightly damp. He picked the mail up from the eroded doormat, tucking it into the middle of the papers, and headed upstairs. The treads were worn, almost threadbare, and here and there the passage of feet had left a blackening clag on the edge of them. His hand curled around the banister, finding the residue of tack where the polish had dribbled round and collected underneath.
At the top of the stairs, a glass door led through to reception, where the tall dark desk stood guard as always. Brian unlocked the door, let himself in, and went straight through to light the gas grill in the kitchen. If that hadn't heated up by the time the residents came down for breakfast, there'd be hell to pay. Then he made a pot of tea and settled down to the papers for a while. No need to start setting up. Plenty of time, yet.
The date caught his eye. Three days 'til his birthday.
The thought of turning twenty-one scared him a little. A milestone he hadn't been prepared for. Somehow, it always felt as if he should have had his life sorted by now. As if he should have made up his mind what he wanted to do, rather than spend it waiting tables in a crappy seaside hotel. Cooking the odd breakfast. He'd only just turned twenty when he started working at the Royal, so that meant he'd been working there for almost a year. Almost a year.
It was only supposed to be a Summer job, a bit of weekend bar work for the extra cash. Suddenly it was September, and Charlie - the owner - had offered him more shifts. Got him out from behind the bar and onto waiting tables. Next thing he knew it was nearly Christmas, office party season was in full swing, and they hadn't been able to do without him. He learnt to do Silver Service. He got more hours, more money. He got so that he couldn't do without either. And now, without him even noticing, a whole year had crept by.
It took him a while, but eventually Brian managed to track down the veg order. A single sheet torn from an order pad, looking rather forlorn in the middle of the peg board. It was supposed to be written in the diary, but that kind of detail had, typically, escaped Big Jake. His methods were his own, and tended to differ from everyone else's routine. His childish, crabbed handwriting covered every inch of the scrap of paper. Chefs. Brian shook his head and picked up the phone, preparing himself for the ritual of the morning's grocery order.
'Morning, Morrison's.'
'Hi, can I place an order?'
'Who for.'
'Royal Hotel.'
'Aye, on ye go.'
Brian ordered the veg, running through the scrawled list. Occasionally, the woman on the other end would ask him if he wanted mixed peppers, or what kind of potatoes he wanted. Working with Big Jake. Never straightforward, even when he wasn't there. Eventually, the little dance ended and he hung up, plonking the yellowed handset in its equally yellowed cradle.
Four sausages and eight slices of bacon from the butcher's pack, laid neatly on a platter, head to tail. Four not-quite-half-inch thick slices of black pudding with the plastic skin removed. These went on another platter, along with the halved tomatoes. A dozen or so mushrooms, quartered. They'd end up in a medium saucepan with a knob of butter, but for the time being Brian left them where they were.
Prep done, Brian looked around the kitchen for a second, drinking in the hush. The quietness was a little unsettling. Out of character for a room that was normally crammed to the gunnels with people and noise. The only sounds were waiting ones - the insistent hiss of the gas grill, the faint hummmm of the fridges, and the ticking of the bakelite toaster.
In a couple of hours time, it'd be back to the usual. Heat and noise, swearing and sweating and clattering pans. For the time being, it was a stage set waiting for the players to arrive.
Brian took the plate of toast through to the restaurant, taking care to open the door with enough force to make its sprung hinge creak loudly. Announcing his arrival was all part of the act, the same as draping a cloth over his arm, or arranging the breakfasts the same way on every plate. Helped to maintain an illusion, to distract them from awkward questions, such as who had actually cooked the breakfast.
The whole thing was one big charade. He was no chef. That's not to say he couldn't cook a breakfast or two, any eejit with half a sense of timing could do that. It was a matter of getting things in the right order, that was all. Fruit juice, cereal, tea and toast. Kept them busy while the breakfasts went on, meant they weren't sitting about waiting. But he was no chef. If things went wrong, as they sometimes did, he could only chuck everything away, start all over again.
'There we go,' he said, placing the plate down. 'Everything okay?'
It was the big guy with glasses, the one Brian had privately christened Chubby, that answered. The other three ignored him. 'Yes, fine, thank you.'
'Can I get you any more tea?'
Chubby lifted the lid of the teapot and peered inside. The gesture was so exaggerated that Brian wondered what he might have expected to find lurking in the teapot. A genie, perhaps, or a dormouse. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 'I think we're fine just now.' He said eventually, a smirk rising to his lips. Brian silently suffixed 'Chubby' with 'Tosser'.
'No problem. Just let me know if you need any more.' Chubby nodded, still smirking. One of the women faked a smile. The other woman was still reading the paper. 'Are you ready for your breakfasts?' Brian asked, collecting the empty juice glasses. They answered with a variety of murmurs, nods, or blanking him completely.
As soon as he opened the kitchen door he could smell the black pudding. He allowed himself a smile as he pulled the tray out from the grill. The slices are covered in fine white foam, the occasional seed pearls of barley only just beginning to brown. Perfect. He flipped everything over and back under they went. Now to light the stove.
The technique was something he'd learned quickly. Turn the knob. Pause. Strike the match towards the burner and immediately jerk away. It had only taken one bad attempt to learn how not to do it. The hairs on the back of his hand had grown back eventually.
Tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, bacon. Sausages in the deep fat fryer. Then, for a second, in the middle of it all, he stood back. A calm moment while everything happened at once.
They were an odd bunch, that lot. Brian knew that even when the restaurant was at its busiest there'd often be a table like that. Everyone around them laughing and joking, putting effort into their enjoyment, and somewhere in the middle of it, a po-faced table of two. Determined to ignore everyone else, the room, each other. A tiny iceberg in a warm sea, stubbornly refusing to melt.
These four had the same chilly air about them.
Brian retrieved the plates from where they'd been warming under the grill and began plating everything up. Perfect eggs, bacon crisp but not brown, mushrooms, black pudding. The deep-fried sausages looked amazing - no stripes of char from being under the grill, perfectly and evenly cooked, the skin crisp and golden. His stomach roared its approval. The sooner he got these plates out, the sooner he could get some bacon on for himself.
'Careful,' he said as he put the first two plates down, 'the plates are quite hot.'
'That's great,' said one of the women. 'Looks lovely.' She glanced up at Brian and immediately looked away.
'Very nice,' Chubby added.
The sad looking guy, the one Brian had nicknamed Curly, buried his attention in the motoring supplement and didn't say a word.
The younger of the two women didn't say anything, either. Instead, she lifted a triangle of toast from the rack and began crushing butter onto it, all the while aiming venomous glances across the table at Curly, her deafening silence sucking all the sound from the room.
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three
Breakfast was already underway in the sandwich shop as Brian came back with the papers. One guy was struggling out of the shop with three polystyrene cups balanced on a big paper bag, and there were another two or three inside the shop placing their orders. The smell of bacon wafted across, and his stomach growled as he turned the corner, heading towards the vennel that would take him through the façade of shops to the hotel's entrance.
He stepped around the remains of the foam as he went. Up close, the tree looked worse than he'd imagined. Cracked and charred; the heat must have been fierce. He shook his head, went on through.
The Royal Hotel was built out of one of the old townhouses that lined the upper end of the high street. It sat on the corner, above the shops, looking out over the junction. Although it had been a hotel for years, it was one of those buildings that would always feel like a conversion from the inside; there was something about the scale of things that gave it away. The ceilings, just that bit too high. The marble fireplace, so grand that it made the functional, sturdy furniture look even cheaper. The majestic sweep of the stairwell, complete with chandelier. A modern replacement, of course. The original would have been crystal rather than glass.
The place felt like an old lady who'd fallen on hard times. The string of pearls around her neck might be convincing fakes, but with a real fur coat on top of it all. Certainly, it had that air of grandeur. An inexplicable presence that implied a nobly taken - if reluctant - decision to descend a couple of rungs on the social ladder.
The building retained that on its own, even if it had been forcibly converted into a second rate guest house in drag.
Brian planted the stubby key into the hole in the middle of the brass plate and clonked the lock open. The door opened with that familiar waft of Brasso, furniture polish, and the musty undercurrent of something slightly damp. He picked the mail up from the eroded doormat, tucking it into the middle of the papers, and headed upstairs. The treads were worn, almost threadbare, and here and there the passage of feet had left a blackening clag on the edge of them. His hand curled around the banister, finding the residue of tack where the polish had dribbled round and collected underneath.
At the top of the stairs, a glass door led through to reception, where the tall dark desk stood guard as always. Brian unlocked the door, let himself in, and went straight through to light the gas grill in the kitchen. If that hadn't heated up by the time the residents came down for breakfast, there'd be hell to pay. Then he made a pot of tea and settled down to the papers for a while. No need to start setting up. Plenty of time, yet.
The date caught his eye. Three days 'til his birthday.
The thought of turning twenty-one scared him a little. A milestone he hadn't been prepared for. Somehow, it always felt as if he should have had his life sorted by now. As if he should have made up his mind what he wanted to do, rather than spend it waiting tables in a crappy seaside hotel. Cooking the odd breakfast. He'd only just turned twenty when he started working at the Royal, so that meant he'd been working there for almost a year. Almost a year.
It was only supposed to be a Summer job, a bit of weekend bar work for the extra cash. Suddenly it was September, and Charlie - the owner - had offered him more shifts. Got him out from behind the bar and onto waiting tables. Next thing he knew it was nearly Christmas, office party season was in full swing, and they hadn't been able to do without him. He learnt to do Silver Service. He got more hours, more money. He got so that he couldn't do without either. And now, without him even noticing, a whole year had crept by.
It took him a while, but eventually Brian managed to track down the veg order. A single sheet torn from an order pad, looking rather forlorn in the middle of the peg board. It was supposed to be written in the diary, but that kind of detail had, typically, escaped Big Jake. His methods were his own, and tended to differ from everyone else's routine. His childish, crabbed handwriting covered every inch of the scrap of paper. Chefs. Brian shook his head and picked up the phone, preparing himself for the ritual of the morning's grocery order.
'Morning, Morrison's.'
'Hi, can I place an order?'
'Who for.'
'Royal Hotel.'
'Aye, on ye go.'
Brian ordered the veg, running through the scrawled list. Occasionally, the woman on the other end would ask him if he wanted mixed peppers, or what kind of potatoes he wanted. Working with Big Jake. Never straightforward, even when he wasn't there. Eventually, the little dance ended and he hung up, plonking the yellowed handset in its equally yellowed cradle.
Four sausages and eight slices of bacon from the butcher's pack, laid neatly on a platter, head to tail. Four not-quite-half-inch thick slices of black pudding with the plastic skin removed. These went on another platter, along with the halved tomatoes. A dozen or so mushrooms, quartered. They'd end up in a medium saucepan with a knob of butter, but for the time being Brian left them where they were.
Prep done, Brian looked around the kitchen for a second, drinking in the hush. The quietness was a little unsettling. Out of character for a room that was normally crammed to the gunnels with people and noise. The only sounds were waiting ones - the insistent hiss of the gas grill, the faint hummmm of the fridges, and the ticking of the bakelite toaster.
In a couple of hours time, it'd be back to the usual. Heat and noise, swearing and sweating and clattering pans. For the time being, it was a stage set waiting for the players to arrive.
Brian took the plate of toast through to the restaurant, taking care to open the door with enough force to make its sprung hinge creak loudly. Announcing his arrival was all part of the act, the same as draping a cloth over his arm, or arranging the breakfasts the same way on every plate. Helped to maintain an illusion, to distract them from awkward questions, such as who had actually cooked the breakfast.
The whole thing was one big charade. He was no chef. That's not to say he couldn't cook a breakfast or two, any eejit with half a sense of timing could do that. It was a matter of getting things in the right order, that was all. Fruit juice, cereal, tea and toast. Kept them busy while the breakfasts went on, meant they weren't sitting about waiting. But he was no chef. If things went wrong, as they sometimes did, he could only chuck everything away, start all over again.
'There we go,' he said, placing the plate down. 'Everything okay?'
It was the big guy with glasses, the one Brian had privately christened Chubby, that answered. The other three ignored him. 'Yes, fine, thank you.'
'Can I get you any more tea?'
Chubby lifted the lid of the teapot and peered inside. The gesture was so exaggerated that Brian wondered what he might have expected to find lurking in the teapot. A genie, perhaps, or a dormouse. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 'I think we're fine just now.' He said eventually, a smirk rising to his lips. Brian silently suffixed 'Chubby' with 'Tosser'.
'No problem. Just let me know if you need any more.' Chubby nodded, still smirking. One of the women faked a smile. The other woman was still reading the paper. 'Are you ready for your breakfasts?' Brian asked, collecting the empty juice glasses. They answered with a variety of murmurs, nods, or blanking him completely.
As soon as he opened the kitchen door he could smell the black pudding. He allowed himself a smile as he pulled the tray out from the grill. The slices are covered in fine white foam, the occasional seed pearls of barley only just beginning to brown. Perfect. He flipped everything over and back under they went. Now to light the stove.
The technique was something he'd learned quickly. Turn the knob. Pause. Strike the match towards the burner and immediately jerk away. It had only taken one bad attempt to learn how not to do it. The hairs on the back of his hand had grown back eventually.
Tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, bacon. Sausages in the deep fat fryer. Then, for a second, in the middle of it all, he stood back. A calm moment while everything happened at once.
They were an odd bunch, that lot. Brian knew that even when the restaurant was at its busiest there'd often be a table like that. Everyone around them laughing and joking, putting effort into their enjoyment, and somewhere in the middle of it, a po-faced table of two. Determined to ignore everyone else, the room, each other. A tiny iceberg in a warm sea, stubbornly refusing to melt.
These four had the same chilly air about them.
Brian retrieved the plates from where they'd been warming under the grill and began plating everything up. Perfect eggs, bacon crisp but not brown, mushrooms, black pudding. The deep-fried sausages looked amazing - no stripes of char from being under the grill, perfectly and evenly cooked, the skin crisp and golden. His stomach roared its approval. The sooner he got these plates out, the sooner he could get some bacon on for himself.
'Careful,' he said as he put the first two plates down, 'the plates are quite hot.'
'That's great,' said one of the women. 'Looks lovely.' She glanced up at Brian and immediately looked away.
'Very nice,' Chubby added.
The sad looking guy, the one Brian had nicknamed Curly, buried his attention in the motoring supplement and didn't say a word.
The younger of the two women didn't say anything, either. Instead, she lifted a triangle of toast from the rack and began crushing butter onto it, all the while aiming venomous glances across the table at Curly, her deafening silence sucking all the sound from the room.
Contents - previous - next
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