The Royal Hotel
Chapter Three
one
Jean lit up, trying not to look at the leftovers as she pushed them away. The bottom of the plate scratched and scraped its way across the top of the old twin-tub. In the corner, the tumbledryer chewed a load of towels, churning musty warmth and the strong smell of fabric conditioner into the cellar. It hadn't helped her appetite. Although, despite leaving most of the Chicken Cordon Blue on the plate, she still felt bloated, and she eased her thumb behind her waistband as she filled her lungs with smoke.
Chicken Cordon Bloody Blue. Not the Kiev she'd asked for, though there wasn't much to choose between them in appearance; both the same shape, both coated in soggy breadcrumbs, both with a greasy centre. And maybe the garlic butter would've been just as bad. Typical Big Jake, though - whenever he was in, it was a case of you get what you're given, not what you want. The cheeky bugger. Garlic breath bad for business indeed.
She pushed the plate further from her. The chicken had oozed most of its cheesy innards onto the plate. She picked a dirty dishcloth from the pile and draped it over the top. Nothing to see here, folks, move along please.
Jean took a last draw and dropped the cigarette onto the stone flags. She lowered herself on top of it, crushing the spark out with one twist of her toe.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. A pair of chunky black trainers appeared, stepping around the toilet bowl. It was meant to be the staff facility, but since there was no lock on the cellar door, nobody used it. The trainers turned around to close the door, and then started down the stairs. They soon revealed that they were attached to a pair of tracksuit bottoms, far too clean to belong to Wee Jake.
'That you Darren?'
The trackies gave way to a long sleeved T-shirt, also quite clean, and on top of that a face with a lop-sided smile.
'Aye, that's me.'
He was a nice boy, Darren. It was those eyes - big cow eyes he had, long-lashed and dark. They were the thing you noticed, not the acne or the stud earring. Really, it wasn't right that earring; boys shouldn't get their ears pierced. Tattoos were just as bad. They were okay if they could be hidden, on the back or the arm like Kevin's - anywhere a shirt could cover them - but not on the hands or the neck or anywhere else that the world and their mothers could see them.
Darren hauled a pack of Ciabattas from the bottom of the freezer and dropped the lid closed, thump. 'Want me to fetch your plates and that up?'
Jean shook her head - there was time for another fag yet, but as she leant to get her lighter, it was the thought of it sitting there, going cold, congealing… She caught a smell of the food, the greasiness of it, the week-old chip fat, the heaviness of the cheese.
'Darren?'
'Aye?'
'I've changed my mind. Can you take them for me? D'ye mind?'
He clumped down a couple of stairs and reached down for the plate. Jean handed it up to him, and caught sight of it again. The breadcrumbs, the pale chicken, the too-pink ham, the. The bright yellow cheese. It looked like a deep fried boil.
'No hungry?'
Jean shook her head.
Darren closed the cellar door behind him and climbed the stairs two at a time. The kitchen was so full of noise and people and the smell of cooking that it all spilled out, trailing down the stairs to meet him.
Big Jake had centre stage as usual, punctuating his staccato directions with jabs and sweeps from the sharp end of his biggest chef's knife. He was the ringmaster, the chief, the leader of the school band. The call and answer of it never stopped, asking Jackie if she'd finished with the soups and sauces, if she'd checked the fish fridge, if the fryers were hot, if Kevin had finished the garnishes yet. Darren tried not to make eye contact as he dumped the rolls onto the end of the worktop.
'Don't leave those there. Give them Kevin.'
Kevin closed a sweaty fist around the end of the bag and swung it out of sight below his bit of the bench. Darren made for the safety of dishwash.
'Those potatoes peeled?' Big Jakes eyes were as sharp as the end of that knife.
Darren shook his head.
'Can't hear you.' The knife end twitched.
'Eh, no-'
'No what?' Back and forth it went, slower and more controlled than a tremble. The movement became a tiny figure-of-eight as the seconds ticked by, gradually expanding. The eyes above remained, fixed.
'Oh - No, Chef.'
'Thankyou - that's all I was looking for.' Knife and eyes flicked away together. 'Get those tatties done. The whole bag. Those garnishes finished?' Darren looked around, but Jake's knife was pointed elsewhere. 'KEV - garnishes?' Kevin lumbered around to grunt a response.
Darren rolled his eyes as he stepped through into dishwash, peeler in hand.
Wee Jake laughed and shook his head. 'Fuck-in psycho man.'
Darren smiled back, lopsided. 'You're telling me.'
Jean smoked her second and wondered. What was it about being below ground that made it hard to tell where anything was? High Street felt like it was that way, parallel with the stairs, but that would mean part of the cellar stretched out beyond the hotel's walls and under the courtyard. And that wasn't right. The stairs ran up towards High Street. She knew that, it was getting her head to agree that was the problem.
It was a strange little room, the cellar. Sweaty and cramped at the laundry end, cold and damp at the other, the space divided in two by a padlocked iron gate. Without a lock at the top of the stairs, it was the only way of keeping the drink secure. She curled one hand around one of the upright bars, letting the coolness of the metal seep into her scalded, cracked palms. The black paint was pitted and flaked, rough to touch, and the metal it revealed was dark. It was snakelike, the way it looked as if it should be wet; it wasn't, just cold. It felt ancient.
Jean checked her watch. She'd a few more minutes. Smoking two back to back was giving her a funny head, but when would she get another? If it got busy - not that it looked like it would - but if it did, she could be waiting 'til the end of the night. There was no way to tell.
Behind the gate, a line of stacked crates held the mixers. Some were already running low; for some reason everyone was drinking vodka and pineapple juice these days. Even the thought of it was bad - the juice thick and sweet, the vodka bitter and harsh. A queasy drink, altogether - far better to stick to the red wine. Although that hadn't done her any favours, either.
Jean glanced at the beer and lager kegs, the bottles of gas, the large pump on the wall that fed the taps in the bar. Plastic tubes sprouted from it in all directions - it reminded her of the diagrams in Lesley's biology books. At the far end of the cellar was a rack with all the wine from the bottom of the list. The expensive bottles that nobody drank. The house wine didn't usually make it onto the rack. Instead, it lived in the cardboard boxes it came in, until it was lugged upstairs six bottles at a time.
The really expensive bottles, the vintage brandies and champagnes, were stashed in an old writing desk that Charlie had the only key for. In all these years, she'd only been in it the once. Old bottles, stacked one on top of another, their labels worn thin and brittle by the mould that stained them. Mummified bottles, enclosed, sealed into their stained-pine sarcophagus.
How would they feel? Would they be dry, snakelike the same as the bars of the gate? Or would they be slick with mould? The uncleanliness of it spread across her scalded palms, itching. The sudden smell of decay hit her, a rottenness, a stench that saturated everything and wanted to overwhelm her. It was everything bad, the stink of old chip-grease, of the melted cheese, the dead water from the bud vases, the empty ashtrays she'd scrubbed clean and the bleach she'd used to scour them. It was Mrs. Dawson, sickly mixed with the sweet smell of the sherry when she'd asked for another glass. Jean covered her mouth and heaved against herself, bent double as the pain leapt through her once again.
Darren sucked the end of his finger. The peeler had taken a neat layer of skin off, blood welling to fill the groove it had left as he watched. It could have been worse. The other week, Wee Jake had distracted Kev while he was chopping an onion, and the fat idiot had taken the tip off his thumb. Not the meat though, just a bit of skin. He still had to wear a rubber sheath over the end.
Blood continued to ooze out, tiny beads swelling and merging on the surface of the skin. He gave it another suck, dabbed it with a paper towel, even tried to blow it dry. It wasn't stopping. He was going to need one of those daft plasters, the blue ones that looked as if they should have the flintstones on them. Darren fetched the first aid box out from under the sink, an old margarine tub with a red felt tip cross drawn on the lid.
'Who's cut themselves?' Big Jake had appeared from nowhere. 'Let me see.'
Darren held his finger out.
Jake took the first aid box out of Darren's hand. 'That's not a fucking cut, I've had bigger scratches itching my balls.'
Darren wiped the end of his finger clean with his thumb. It was starting to sting.
'Here you go,' Big Jake said, holding out the smallest plaster he could find. 'Waste of a fucking plaster if you ask me.'
Jean half climbed, half crawled her way up the rickety cellar stairs, her body a trembling mass of aching chill around a sharp and wrenching core. The pain was deep-rooted, as though something were being torn away from somewhere inside.
She reached the top, one arm still clamped around her middle, holding down the gnawing, queasy pain. It surged again, stronger than ever, and it felt as if something gave within her. She tugged at the zip of her skirt, hauling it down to her knees along with her knickers, and she perched on the rim of the cold, seatless bowl.
Hot tears traced the lines of her cheeks, tears that the last racking clench of her bowels had wrung from her. The pain hit once more, piercing through from breast to navel, and then was gone.
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one
Jean lit up, trying not to look at the leftovers as she pushed them away. The bottom of the plate scratched and scraped its way across the top of the old twin-tub. In the corner, the tumbledryer chewed a load of towels, churning musty warmth and the strong smell of fabric conditioner into the cellar. It hadn't helped her appetite. Although, despite leaving most of the Chicken Cordon Blue on the plate, she still felt bloated, and she eased her thumb behind her waistband as she filled her lungs with smoke.
Chicken Cordon Bloody Blue. Not the Kiev she'd asked for, though there wasn't much to choose between them in appearance; both the same shape, both coated in soggy breadcrumbs, both with a greasy centre. And maybe the garlic butter would've been just as bad. Typical Big Jake, though - whenever he was in, it was a case of you get what you're given, not what you want. The cheeky bugger. Garlic breath bad for business indeed.
She pushed the plate further from her. The chicken had oozed most of its cheesy innards onto the plate. She picked a dirty dishcloth from the pile and draped it over the top. Nothing to see here, folks, move along please.
Jean took a last draw and dropped the cigarette onto the stone flags. She lowered herself on top of it, crushing the spark out with one twist of her toe.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. A pair of chunky black trainers appeared, stepping around the toilet bowl. It was meant to be the staff facility, but since there was no lock on the cellar door, nobody used it. The trainers turned around to close the door, and then started down the stairs. They soon revealed that they were attached to a pair of tracksuit bottoms, far too clean to belong to Wee Jake.
'That you Darren?'
The trackies gave way to a long sleeved T-shirt, also quite clean, and on top of that a face with a lop-sided smile.
'Aye, that's me.'
He was a nice boy, Darren. It was those eyes - big cow eyes he had, long-lashed and dark. They were the thing you noticed, not the acne or the stud earring. Really, it wasn't right that earring; boys shouldn't get their ears pierced. Tattoos were just as bad. They were okay if they could be hidden, on the back or the arm like Kevin's - anywhere a shirt could cover them - but not on the hands or the neck or anywhere else that the world and their mothers could see them.
Darren hauled a pack of Ciabattas from the bottom of the freezer and dropped the lid closed, thump. 'Want me to fetch your plates and that up?'
Jean shook her head - there was time for another fag yet, but as she leant to get her lighter, it was the thought of it sitting there, going cold, congealing… She caught a smell of the food, the greasiness of it, the week-old chip fat, the heaviness of the cheese.
'Darren?'
'Aye?'
'I've changed my mind. Can you take them for me? D'ye mind?'
He clumped down a couple of stairs and reached down for the plate. Jean handed it up to him, and caught sight of it again. The breadcrumbs, the pale chicken, the too-pink ham, the. The bright yellow cheese. It looked like a deep fried boil.
'No hungry?'
Jean shook her head.
Darren closed the cellar door behind him and climbed the stairs two at a time. The kitchen was so full of noise and people and the smell of cooking that it all spilled out, trailing down the stairs to meet him.
Big Jake had centre stage as usual, punctuating his staccato directions with jabs and sweeps from the sharp end of his biggest chef's knife. He was the ringmaster, the chief, the leader of the school band. The call and answer of it never stopped, asking Jackie if she'd finished with the soups and sauces, if she'd checked the fish fridge, if the fryers were hot, if Kevin had finished the garnishes yet. Darren tried not to make eye contact as he dumped the rolls onto the end of the worktop.
'Don't leave those there. Give them Kevin.'
Kevin closed a sweaty fist around the end of the bag and swung it out of sight below his bit of the bench. Darren made for the safety of dishwash.
'Those potatoes peeled?' Big Jakes eyes were as sharp as the end of that knife.
Darren shook his head.
'Can't hear you.' The knife end twitched.
'Eh, no-'
'No what?' Back and forth it went, slower and more controlled than a tremble. The movement became a tiny figure-of-eight as the seconds ticked by, gradually expanding. The eyes above remained, fixed.
'Oh - No, Chef.'
'Thankyou - that's all I was looking for.' Knife and eyes flicked away together. 'Get those tatties done. The whole bag. Those garnishes finished?' Darren looked around, but Jake's knife was pointed elsewhere. 'KEV - garnishes?' Kevin lumbered around to grunt a response.
Darren rolled his eyes as he stepped through into dishwash, peeler in hand.
Wee Jake laughed and shook his head. 'Fuck-in psycho man.'
Darren smiled back, lopsided. 'You're telling me.'
Jean smoked her second and wondered. What was it about being below ground that made it hard to tell where anything was? High Street felt like it was that way, parallel with the stairs, but that would mean part of the cellar stretched out beyond the hotel's walls and under the courtyard. And that wasn't right. The stairs ran up towards High Street. She knew that, it was getting her head to agree that was the problem.
It was a strange little room, the cellar. Sweaty and cramped at the laundry end, cold and damp at the other, the space divided in two by a padlocked iron gate. Without a lock at the top of the stairs, it was the only way of keeping the drink secure. She curled one hand around one of the upright bars, letting the coolness of the metal seep into her scalded, cracked palms. The black paint was pitted and flaked, rough to touch, and the metal it revealed was dark. It was snakelike, the way it looked as if it should be wet; it wasn't, just cold. It felt ancient.
Jean checked her watch. She'd a few more minutes. Smoking two back to back was giving her a funny head, but when would she get another? If it got busy - not that it looked like it would - but if it did, she could be waiting 'til the end of the night. There was no way to tell.
Behind the gate, a line of stacked crates held the mixers. Some were already running low; for some reason everyone was drinking vodka and pineapple juice these days. Even the thought of it was bad - the juice thick and sweet, the vodka bitter and harsh. A queasy drink, altogether - far better to stick to the red wine. Although that hadn't done her any favours, either.
Jean glanced at the beer and lager kegs, the bottles of gas, the large pump on the wall that fed the taps in the bar. Plastic tubes sprouted from it in all directions - it reminded her of the diagrams in Lesley's biology books. At the far end of the cellar was a rack with all the wine from the bottom of the list. The expensive bottles that nobody drank. The house wine didn't usually make it onto the rack. Instead, it lived in the cardboard boxes it came in, until it was lugged upstairs six bottles at a time.
The really expensive bottles, the vintage brandies and champagnes, were stashed in an old writing desk that Charlie had the only key for. In all these years, she'd only been in it the once. Old bottles, stacked one on top of another, their labels worn thin and brittle by the mould that stained them. Mummified bottles, enclosed, sealed into their stained-pine sarcophagus.
How would they feel? Would they be dry, snakelike the same as the bars of the gate? Or would they be slick with mould? The uncleanliness of it spread across her scalded palms, itching. The sudden smell of decay hit her, a rottenness, a stench that saturated everything and wanted to overwhelm her. It was everything bad, the stink of old chip-grease, of the melted cheese, the dead water from the bud vases, the empty ashtrays she'd scrubbed clean and the bleach she'd used to scour them. It was Mrs. Dawson, sickly mixed with the sweet smell of the sherry when she'd asked for another glass. Jean covered her mouth and heaved against herself, bent double as the pain leapt through her once again.
Darren sucked the end of his finger. The peeler had taken a neat layer of skin off, blood welling to fill the groove it had left as he watched. It could have been worse. The other week, Wee Jake had distracted Kev while he was chopping an onion, and the fat idiot had taken the tip off his thumb. Not the meat though, just a bit of skin. He still had to wear a rubber sheath over the end.
Blood continued to ooze out, tiny beads swelling and merging on the surface of the skin. He gave it another suck, dabbed it with a paper towel, even tried to blow it dry. It wasn't stopping. He was going to need one of those daft plasters, the blue ones that looked as if they should have the flintstones on them. Darren fetched the first aid box out from under the sink, an old margarine tub with a red felt tip cross drawn on the lid.
'Who's cut themselves?' Big Jake had appeared from nowhere. 'Let me see.'
Darren held his finger out.
Jake took the first aid box out of Darren's hand. 'That's not a fucking cut, I've had bigger scratches itching my balls.'
Darren wiped the end of his finger clean with his thumb. It was starting to sting.
'Here you go,' Big Jake said, holding out the smallest plaster he could find. 'Waste of a fucking plaster if you ask me.'
Jean half climbed, half crawled her way up the rickety cellar stairs, her body a trembling mass of aching chill around a sharp and wrenching core. The pain was deep-rooted, as though something were being torn away from somewhere inside.
She reached the top, one arm still clamped around her middle, holding down the gnawing, queasy pain. It surged again, stronger than ever, and it felt as if something gave within her. She tugged at the zip of her skirt, hauling it down to her knees along with her knickers, and she perched on the rim of the cold, seatless bowl.
Hot tears traced the lines of her cheeks, tears that the last racking clench of her bowels had wrung from her. The pain hit once more, piercing through from breast to navel, and then was gone.
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