The Belle Hotel

by Craig Melvin

  It was nice and warm at Dawn’s. Her stove was full of wood and flaming. I could be happy here, he thought. Just Dawn and me. She bent down to stoke the fire and he took a gulp of the tattooed cleft of her bum. He sipped the tea, three fly-flecked sugars, and weeded out the idea. Dawn was way beyond him and then his reputation would be mud up here, too. Too much talk of his bad behaviour went down in the chalky soil to make Dawn think twice about fucking Charlie, who now took a different tack.

  ‘You growing any beets at the moment? I’ve got a crop ready to pull out, but I want some tiddlers. Got an idea for a dish.’

  They went out along the wicker fencing to the cold frames and Dawn drew a handful of ink-veined leaves from their frost-free bed. Gathering allotment-grown veg for Belle Hotel as she had been doing since she was but a girl.

  ‘Perfect, just what I wanted. Thanks. Righto, I’ve got lots to do, thanks for the tea, Dawny. See you soon.’

  He kissed her on wind-burned cheeks and went back to his shed. He shut up sharpish and set off down Franco’s track to Belle Hotel.

  Charlie came in the front entrance, too much chance of meeting a supplier out back, and sniffed for a sense of service. The restaurant was empty, most Monday specials were back at their desks by three, though the place reeked of their consumption. Beef on the bone. Lamb shank. Truffle oil and mustard. The faint taint of cognac rang Charlie’s till and taste buds. That party of accountants must have had some big numbers to celebrate. Claire and Emma had left the place pretty tidy, totalled to Charlie’s eyes but good enough for any tiptoe punters peering in about dinner. He could hear laughter from the bar. Another bawdy cackle from Janet. How could she do it? Same bleary faces, same jaded jokes, day in, day out. All for what? Charlie knew the answer. For family. For love. For want of anything better to do. He left the bag of beets on table nine and swung through to rob the till to pay Sinker and Brampton when they came banging.

  ‘Hi, Mum, it’ll be ready ’bout four.’

  Family tradition. Their Monday, Sunday roast. Regular as clockwork when Franco was alive. Three pm, rib of beef and goblet of Gigondas. Janet tutted her tardy son back to the kitchen. She was hungry, knew she shouldn’t do it and, sod it, grabbed another fist of nuts from the greasy bucket under the bar.

  ‘Half for you, Jan, darling?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do, Rory, love.’

  Hazards of the job, those handfuls of halves and peanuts – they were hell on the waistline. Janet banged the now empty till shut with her beer gut and gulped her lager/nut starter.

  The phone rang as Charlie passed reception. Damn, why did it always do that? He leaned over the desk and picked it up.

  ‘Hi, Charlie, Chris Evans here. How you doing? Good. Me too. Listen I’m holding a corn on the cob. Yep. What’s best? Oh, should I pan fry it then?’

  Cookery demonstration over, Charlie slung the phone back over the counter and carried on towards lunch.

  ‘Hi, Fish.’

  The tiles gleamed white, the grouting a grotty brown. Fish was just mopping himself out of the back door.

  ‘Oh, all right, boss. All done, thirty for lunch, all on set menu though, tight-arsed bastards. Apart from one. Artist fella. David Wiggly or summat. Drew a lobster on a menu. I’ve stuck it on the wall by the fryers. Wanted something called a Dave Salad. Sounded like cold egg and chips to me, so I did that and charged him twenty quid. I’ll see you later, hey?’

  Charlie made a show of walking carefully across the mopped floor. He dropped it the moment Fish had swung out of the back door. The heavy steel slab was about to slam shut when four blood and sausage fingers appeared halfway up.

  ‘Hello, Charlie boy. I’ve come for my money. Three weeks, I’m ’fraid. Hard cheese on you if you’ve not got it.’

  Charlie had just enough to see Brampton off the premises and back to Mrs B for a noggin of brie. He was about to slither over and slide the lock when four fishy fingers slipped around and stopped him. Sinker, come for his cash. People were so predictable when it came to getting paid.

  ‘Sorry about this, Nigel, I’m clean out of cash, it’ll have to be a cheque.’

  The fishmonger stood there, looking down at his yellow wellies, and emitted a salty sigh at the unfairness of life. His last Belle Hotel cheque had bounced three times. Still, a cheque in the hand, better than a slap in the face with a wet fish. Unless of course you were Sinker. Charlie had been bouncing cheques on Sinker for the best part of a decade. This gave Sinker nothing much to smile about, which in a way suited him. Belle Hotel was broke and all of Brighton knew it. More fool you if you left the place with one of Charlie’s rubber cheques.

  Charlie reappeared brandishing the chequebook and a bag of beetroots. He handed Sinker the cheque, Sinker slipped back to the sea, and Charlie tipped earthy beets onto stainless steel. The pitter of grit resounded to the bass thud of the beetroot. Charlie slid the baby beets to one side, scissor-cut the tops off the big ones, double jacketed them in foil and slung them in the ever-ready oven, then trimmed, peeled and boiled his baby beets in a two-inch copper bottom and rag-dried the prep table before setting up the mandolin.

  The angled slicer, with its knuckle-shredding blade, gleamed as it had the day that Franco brought it back from Catering Supply Co.

  ‘Righto, that’s her set up. Now hand me a spud, Charlie Farley.’

  Charlie had watched in amazement as with a quick flick of his cuff-rolled wrists his grandfather dispatched the starchy orb above into see-through slithers below.

  Now he watched his hand, and remembered following Franco’s. This time it would be half spud, half beetroot layered with cream, garlic and thyme, just as he’d decided up on Whitehawk Hill. This was his craft, what he did for family, for love, for want of anything better to do. As he went through the motions, aping Franco, Charlie had a Damascene moment. Maybe he wasn’t a genius after all? Maybe he was just a cook with a raging ego, eh, Ernest?

  He finished the top of the gratin with a light grate of Emmenthal, slung the grater into the sink for Fish to do later, and popped the tray into the oven under his beetroots. The foil-wrapped chunkies were beginning to sizzle, red-hot juice dripping down silver sides. Charlie liked the idea of root juice dripping on to the gratin below. Meat was always roasted this way once, why not veg? He pictured the drizzle of dark red infusing with the garlic-lashed cream below, could taste the flavours. Not a turn was wasted. He reached up for a circular cutter from the tub above the oven and placed it on the table ready for when the gratin slid bubbling from the depths.

  The cooking calmed him further. Belle Hotel might be going bust, but as long as Charlie had blades, flame and bubbling pans, he’d be happy. His world may be collapsing, but at least his soufflés weren’t.

  He moved his baby beets off the flame, fished the garnish out of its juice and blanched them under the cold tap. These too he turned out onto the table next to the cutter. Glancing up his eye caught the lobbo drawing on the menu that Fish had stuck up. Nice work. Funny. Shaking its claw at the punters. Damn you all! David, eh? Wasn’t there an artist who stayed in the seventies called David, too? Did that painting of Franco, Janet and the cat. Maybe he’d copy that lobster onto the menu in future. Be good that. Then Charlie forgot all about the lobster and remembered the slosh of port Franco always gave his venison sauce and set off for the bar with a plastic jug.

  At reception, the phone rang yet again. On his way past the bar, Charlie picked it up.

  ‘Belle Hotel?’

  ‘Charlie, it’s me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lulu, that’s who. Not a good time to be forgetting the sound of my voice when I’m about to put a business opportunity into your ungrateful lap. Don’t forget, you’re invited to late supper at mine on Saturday. Though I don’t know why I bother.’

  ‘Oh, Lu. Sorry, I’m cooking. Fine-tuning. Beetroot.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Well I thought you’d like to know that—’

  ‘Lu, can this wait? I’m cooking.’
<
br />   ‘What is this? Pass up on a business opportunity day?’

  ‘Okay, Lu, thanks. Look, I gotta go.’

  ‘Thanks, Charlie Sheridan. Is that it? Don’t you want to know what the opportunity is? Or are you happy to drift into bankruptcy? I’m helping you here, against my better judgement, Charlie.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. Tell you what, send me a note. See you, later. Lu? Are you there?’

  She’d slammed her end down.

  Lulu looked up from her open-plan desk in the cool interior of Hotel Epicure’s lobby. She sighed and rapped her thoroughly buffed nails on the empty surface. Two guests walked in. Armani jeans, watch and wallet. Lulu’s sigh eased into a sunny beam as the highlighted heads flashed past. She dropped the smile and went back to worrying. Buying Belle Hotel with Graeme wasn’t only a back-up plan. It was THE plan. Only Charlie could fuck things up enough to mean she’d be using it. It was Charlie that had given her this dilemma. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Sadly, Lu knew Charlie. Paul Peters had warned her dad that Charlie and Janet were hanging on by a thread. One last missed payment away from repossession. What she and Graeme were doing was a sensible way to save Belle Hotel from a chain like Hotel Epicure. Where the GP mattered more than the guests. Lulu could barely remember what it was like to work with Charlie. Apart from the memory that nobody had made her so furious since and nobody had worked as well with her as a team since, too. Charlie had lot of growing up to do and an on-time payment to make to ensure Lulu didn’t have to press the Graeme option. But, oh, the absolute anguish of having to give up on Charlie if she did have to do this. Graeme and Lulu being business partners was getting more and more likely. The idea of them being an item was getting more likely too. He fit Madame Eva’s ‘man in blue and white’ premonition. Another bloody chef in blue-and-white check trousers. Graeme’s would be clean and pressed, whereas Charlie’s… God, it didn’t bear thinking about. Although Lulu had come to rather like being single. Men weren’t as satisfying as work.

  Tock-tick, tick-tock, Charlie passing Franco’s clock as he tossed his jug up into the air dotted with dust, and caught it by the handle as it span back down to the threadbare carpet.

  ‘Send me a note.’

  Thinking of Lulu angry made him feel horny and a little bit sorry that he hadn’t tried it on with Dawn up on the hill earlier.

  He saw his mother through the bottom of her half-empty glass as he side-slid past her to get to the port rack.

  ‘You nearly ready? I’m half starving here.’

  ‘Four. Just like I said.’

  With Janet breathing down his neck, he’d have to cheat the beetroots. Charlie pulled them from the oven, tore the foil off with his heat-hardened fingers and gave them five minutes each in the microwave to soften the flesh, but not lose the flavour. He rubbed the skins off all four and chopped them all finely with his eight-inch Sheffield Stainless. The blood of the beetroot stained the blade in ways he’d rather not remember. Took a double dousing under the spray and draw across the front of his chef’s jacket to erase the memory.

  Charlie took chunks and board over to the cooling copper-bottomed pan, tipped the steaming flesh into scarlet water and followed it with the jug of port. Twenty minutes on the fast back burner and he’d be ready with his hand blender – Franco would have loved that contraption – to turn it into purée.

  Tick-tock, drip-drop. As Charlie puréed, a drop of toilet water plopped on Janet’s head. She looked up and groaned.

  ‘Bugger, that’s room three again.’

  The dark circle on the ceiling was growing ever wider. She flicked the latch on the bar door – if anyone was desperate they could come in through the front – and went off for her tools. The damp bag of wrenches, wire and putty were Franco’s answer to everything wet.

  ‘We don’t need a plumber, I’ll go get me bag.’

  This, bravely said, when torrents of water were flowing down the main stairway, out across Ship Street and on to a churning sea. Once Franco had popped his stop-cock, it was pretty clear to Janet that she’d be looking after the twenty showerheads, one hundred and sixteen taps and four urinals – just one more thing on her ever-lengthening list of duties. Charlie had food and she had just about everything else. Still, Janet, mustn’t grumble. Mustn’t grumble, mustn’t grumble. Must run, instead, like hell up the first flight of steps with her rusty answers to whatever dripping disaster awaited in room 3. Whatever it was, there would be no paying for a plumber. Not thrifty pride, like Franco, a very real and very frightening lack of money to pay for anything that went wrong. Sod it, thought Janet fumbling with the pass key, that room had had a new carpet last month. One of Roger’s remnant specials, pay when you can. Don’t want that up again. Quick.

  Charlie rooted around in the back of the walk-in for the last of the venison. There it was, behind the bucket of stock that Fish must have made earlier. Good lad. Charlie picked up the shrink-wrapped loins and trotted back to his bench.

  Tick-tock, drip-drop. Things were not looking good up in room 3. Once Janet had finally got her pass key to work the crime scene hit her full on. Whoever was staying in this room had blocked the toilet with a turd the size of a baby’s arm. Then the recently relieved guest had taken the decision to abandon the rising waters and scarper.

  ‘Shit.’

  Precisely. Janet had two choices. She waded through the brown-flecked water and grabbed the plunger from Franco’s sack as she went. One swift plunge and the rubber dome ploughed on and through the poo like a hot knife through butter. Sadly, Janet followed through, ending up elbow deep in muddy waters.

  She pulled the plunger back, registering the suckering sound and the scent of shit on the air, and gagged. Seeing the excreta-splattered arm of her best white shirt up so close to her face turned the gag into a chunder. Janet sent forth a plume of fizzy peanut arcing onto the already untidy mess of the cramped bathroom.

  Not good. It was not good. She sat on the bed and wept.

  Charlie removed the gratin from the oven, crisp brown on umbered red, and quickly cut four perfect circles from its farthest edge. Two of each circle went onto the pre-warmed plates. This was good, he was feeling it, coming back. The focus. No need to look at the sketch, he knew what he wanted to do with this dish. In flow, spinning from hob to plate, carefully constructing, creating, inventing, drawing on Franco and his other culinary fathers to realise something new.

  Upstairs, Janet snapped out of it, cleared up the crime scene and went upstairs to change her shirt.

  He’d sealed the venison five minutes earlier with a flash in the pan and stuck it into the oven for a sizzle to pink. Holding the red-hot handle with a double folded cloth, careful not to burn himself unnecessarily, he forked the four fillets onto a gratin apiece. Pan with its precious juices back on the hob, ladle of stock from the stock bucket and over to the baby beets just as it comes to the boil. But, wait. The beets were too big. Charlie pulled focus in his mind’s eye and could see the beets upstaging the meat. Chop, chop from the eight-incher, more stain removal needed, and the quarters took their rightful space in the bubbling pan. Fresh ladle at grab height and a quick dip in the blood-warm beetroot purée. Charlie circled the meat with a wide ring of purée then brought the saucepan and its contents over for the final touch.

  The splashes of thin sauce bled to the edge of the purée, halted as Charlie had guessed by the viscous ring. Venison fillet with beetroot purée and gratin.

  The dish was very Joel Robuchon. Charlie had been there on one of his solo trips eating his way through Franco’s legacy. Robuchon was a crazy place but the cooking had been amazing, as had the loyalty of the brigade. Same number of chefs as customers, sixty in all. Bit like Belle Hotel these days. Robuchon still had his star, bastard. Charlie lost his by accident, on purpose. And when he did, he lost everything. But they couldn’t take his cooking away from him. They couldn’t do that. He’d meant what he said at anger management. He had learnt. He did want to control his anger. For the sake of his cookin
g, if nothing else.

  The plates were already at table two, so they could watch reception, when Janet entered. She didn’t mention what happened upstairs, nothing worth telling, really. Just another shitty day at Belle Hotel for Janet Sheridan, née Gay. If she’d never married Johnny, Janet would have never got stuck at Belle Hotel. Lulu had made a lucky escape.

  Just as her buttocks touched the banquette the phone went.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she wearily murmured to Charlie, ‘it’ll be a weekend break.’

  Charlie watched her through the divider and knew from her shoulders it was him. She held the phone up for Charlie to see and mouthed ‘H-I-M.’ Johnny, John, Dad.

  One shake from Charlie and Johnny was gone. Janet could bear to be civil, but she wanted to keep it as short as she could.

  ‘Righto, I’ll tell him. Bye, then.’

  She shuffled back, rolled her eyes at her son, ruffled his already ruffled head and picked up a pitted fork. If they talked about it they would end up rowing and Janet didn’t want that on her two hours off. Charlie was volatile around anything to do with Johnny. He blamed her, in some ways, for Johnny’s departure, more than Franco. If only he knew.

  There was an empty chair at the table. Franco’s. But he was with them now, filling their heads in the silence: a bit of chat about Larry, pulling Charlie’s leg about the busty blonde in room 14. Rolling his Gs on his Gigondas, half an ear on the racing running on the radio to an empty kitchen. Family. Fresh linen. Flowers and all that. Belle Hotel. If we can’t enjoy it ourselves, then who can?

  Charlie moved his plate to cover the worst of the earlier stains from a fixed-price diner. Janet took her first bite and, for a moment, forgot. She forgot they were up to their necks in it – work, shit, debt. Tick-tock, tick-tock, Belle Hotel on the knock. Forgot she had lied to her ex-husband and neglected to tell her son. For one delicious moment, Janet forgot everything except flavour. Christ, this was good. Maybe his best. She knew better than to ask him, Charlie hated commenting on his own cooking, so they ate the dish in silence. Janet slurped the glass of house, Gigondas no more, she’d brought through for them and then, in a habit that annoyed the hell out of Charlie, slurped some of his.