The Belle Hotel

by Craig Melvin

  Charlie felt jittery and it wasn’t just the coffee. He’d come so close to losing the two loves of his life that it scared him even to think about it. And now, every step he took could end up losing them both, just like that. This trip was one of many that he was going to have to take to prove his love, prove that he had changed once and for all and for the better. Prove that he was going to stay that way, not stray off on any wayward paths of old. Stay on the route to redemption lit by the small gleam of self-knowledge he’d recently discovered.

  He pitched up at Haddon’s offices ten minutes early and took the chance to catch up on the competition. Charlie sat under the jaunty ‘H’ and flicked through the latest offerings from Haddon Cookery. He held up the new Gordon, The Ultimate Cookery Course. Charlie read the message from Mr Shouty-Sweary on the back. ‘I want to teach you how to cook good food at home. By stripping away all the hard graft and complexity, anyone can produce mouth-watering recipes. Put simply, I’m going to show you how to cook yourself into a better cook’. Back to basics from Gordon. Very, very nice. Ramsay, now there was a man with a business to behold and a rep as rocky as Charlie’s. He was a lot richer, though. Charlie remembered the day that a guy called Gordon had traipsed after him from Wandsworth to Le Gavroche, and allowed himself a little smile. Also in front of him was a copy of the catering college legend Practical Cookery. Franco had been a tad jealous of the book when Charlie had brought it home that first day after college, mumbling something about all Charlie needing to know being in Franco’s book. Charlie noticed that Michel Roux Jr had given a puff for the new version of the book ‘The ultimate must-have buy for all young cooks and chefs alike’. Charlie couldn’t have got his qualification without it, whatever Franco said, and, having screwed up his school education, that qualification mattered to Charlie. It was his badge of honour. Charlie picked up a copy of one of his favourite cookbooks from the display table. The Ivy by A.A. Gill. This beautiful book had inspired Charlie to add much more to his menu from the East and not to be afraid of delivering top-flight comfort food. He also loved the way that the book was written, not just the writing, but the structure. Gill had used a day-in-the-life format, starting at stupid o’clock and finishing not soon before to give a real taste of what life at that London icon was like. Charlie gave a small sigh, shame that Portobello Belle hadn’t worked out. Shame that Charlie had to work out how to keep paying for it until the break clause kicked in. Maybe he’d give London another go sometime in the future, he could but hope.

  ‘Mr Sheridan? I’m Hope.’

  Yes, you are, smiled the broke chef, and he followed her legs all the way to the elevator before reminding himself that new Charlie didn’t do that kind of thing any more.

  ‘Have you been here before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, Judith’s office is here, on the fourth floor. I’m her assistant. Can I get you anything? Judith is having a macchiato and a glass of iced water.’

  The elevator opened onto a cool marble lobby with glass wall views out over the Euston Road.

  ‘Phew.’

  ‘Yes, it is rather. This way, please.’

  Hope swiped them through ebony inlaid doors and into the editor’s suite. Serious glasses peered out from every cubicle. Pressed checked shirts and clean Levis laughed and leaned back as they swapped endings with Chloé tweed and buffed pumps.

  They passed an open door, Charlie looked in.

  ‘The slush pile,’ said Hope. ‘Who’d want to write fiction?’

  Hope hovered at the door while Charlie took in the towers of typing, all those tales and dreams. Hope switched off the light and shut the door.

  ‘Someone has obviously been in there. Strange… anyway, this way please, Mr Sheridan.’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Yes, Charlie.’

  Judith Langdon’s office was one of four that took in the building’s Soho view. One for each of the four best sellers, he guessed. He could see the horror king’s editor, stacks of classics up the walls, at his desk hunched over a chunk of newly handed-over manuscript. The other two, judging by their wall decorations, looked like romance and crime. Running along the entire inner wall was a shelf of framed black-and-white photographs of Haddon authors, past and present. Charlie spotted Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall grinning across at his editor, Delia beamed out at her public, and some serious tweed and dandruff spoke for the older generation.

  ‘When do I get one of these?’

  ‘Er… some time yet. I’ll see if Judith is ready for you.’

  A tap at the door and the cookbook legend looked up from her Delia Smith cake.

  ‘Ah, the elusive Charlie, do come in, I was just examining these handsome photographs by dear, dear Jason Lowe. Do you know him? He simply turns the page into a plate.’

  Judith raised a recently threaded eyebrow.

  ‘I suppose you know all about me and, more importantly, our list. I’ll give you the potted “me” history anyway, so we get off on the right foot, as it were. Thank you, Hope, that’ll be all… yes, I’ll have my elevenses now. Good gosh, is that the time? Look, Charlie, it’s quite simple, I need people who can hold a saucepan in one hand and a pen in the other. Are you one of those people, Charlie? I can work wonders with a good manuscript, but you’ve got to give me the words first.

  ‘Penny Lee, now, you remember Pen? She always said it’s not the nit-picking or the pedantic doggedness that makes Judith Langdon the best cookery editor and one of the best publishers in town. It’s both those formidable things together. Now when I started here I was on poetry and classics. But Tony said to me, “You’re a girl. Can you cook?” I said no but I still got the job. I was the only female member of our embryonic cookery list, you see. Anyway, we got to work on Cordon Bleu. The authors and I laboured through it for three to four months. When we started I couldn’t even jolly an egg. At the end of it we had an excellent book and I had learned to cook.’

  Hope came in with the coffee. Charlie took slow sips, it gave him something to do.

  ‘Dear Pen was outraged at our first meeting together. Over a hundred and fifty queries on her first draft. As for you, Mr Sheridan, the Michelin star debacle should sell it, but can you deliver in print as well as on the plate?’

  Charlie pushed his thousand words across to Judith. She read, nodded, stirred her short coffee with an initialled silver spoon and let out a rasping laugh.

  ‘Fantastic… I think this can work. But can you keep it up? I’ll need twenty times this at least. And what about the food? What are you going to give us that we can actually cook?’

  ‘Well, I want to take Franco’s old recipes and show how I brought them up to date.’

  ‘Hmm, been done. What else?’

  ‘I want to bring my grandfather’s recipe book to life. It’s the story of Belle Hotel.’

  ‘Good. Warts and all? Including the attack?’

  ‘Yes, including… that.’

  ‘Good again, Charlie. Would you like to join me on my balcony for a cig?’

  She hopped up, cranked open the metal framed window and climbed up on the table to gain access to the ledge.

  ‘Shoo, go away. Bloody pigeons. Hop up. If you dangle your legs over here most of the smoke blows away.’

  Charlie took the proffered Dunhill and let her light it for him with a pearl-handled pistol. They exhaled and took in the view. The BT Tower stood proud over the sordid goings on of Soho.

  ‘I suppose you’d like to know what I can offer you.’

  ‘Well, yes… Do we have a deal?’

  ‘We certainly do, Mr Sheridan. But I’ll tell you now, you’ll bloody well earn it. I let Penny off lightly.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Twenty thousand good, clean, words and I expect nothing less than twenty times the quality of what you’ve just submitted. We’ll discuss the deal after I’ve talked to my colleagues but it’ll be a third on signature, a third on delivery of a mouth-watering manuscript and a third on publication.’


  ‘Can you put that in writing?’

  ‘Can you?’

  Back at Belle Hotel that afternoon Charlie was suffering from writer’s block. The more Charlie thought about it, the less he knew what he wanted to write. Judith Langdon would be as good as her word: ‘Third on signature’, he could invoice the money today, he’d learned how to knock one up in double quick time. That’d mean two and a half grand in their account by Friday – halfway to the Hookes’ target, as long as they didn’t blow it on anything else. But newly commissioned author of the Brit-food cookbook sensation was yet to put pen to paper. Or even nail-stubbed digit to Remington. Weak autumn sunshine flowed up Ship Street, filling the lobby with pale light. Charlie sat at the reception desk, Franco’s ancient typewriter at his fingertips, attention wholly distracted by Franco’s book at its side. Charlie had no fucking idea whatsoever of what to write next. He’d given it his all, well, Lulu had, with that opener to get the deal. A whole day had nearly passed and he’d not heard a peep out of her. He needed her to write this bloody thing for him, if they found out that he could barely write his name, wouldn’t they cancel the contract? Oh well, maybe re-type what Lu had written, just to get him started.

  He thumped ‘M’ for my on the Remington. Nothing, the ink was dry. Eight years in the salty air had parched the ribbon. Stupid, romantic notion. He yanked the M-embossed sheet from the Remington’s grip, flipped its card and leather lid and put the ancient writing machine back in its place. It’d have to be the WP. Now then, how did you get that working?

  *

  Lulu had been absenting herself, but she had been busy on Belle Hotel’s behalf. She made a couple of calls to contacts from her London years and put the gossip machine into overdrive. The Evening Standard picked up on the story of the seaside chef with issues and a cookbook deal. They called to ask if they could send their reviewer down, pronto. Chit chat about Charlie echoed around Town.

  ‘Back in fashion, a cookbook with some confessions? Juicy! So now, we must go again, oh you’ve never been to Belle Hotel, darling you must.’

  Lunch gossip in Soho sent signals down the tracks. Victoria–Haywards Heath–Brighton. The phone was ringing off the hook. Dinner for two, yes Victoria, and… do you have a room?

  The phone rang again, Charlie nodded at Janet who was passing reception.

  ‘You can answer the phone while you write, Shakespeare. Don’t get carried away, we’re not out of trouble yet.’

  Janet flicked the duster at her son. He looked just like his father, sitting behind that desk. Just like him.

  ‘You look just like your father, sat there.’

  Charlie grinned, came out from behind reception and did Franco doing his silly ‘walk this way’ walk from way back when.

  Day Three: –£5,000

  Charlie knew what he wanted to write about after the Kipper Wars. Eggs Benedict. Top of the breakfast menu at Belle Hotel and, if he was going to be honest – and he was going to be honest – a dish with some meaning for Franco, Johnny and him. He typed the ingredients from memory, telling himself he’d check with Franco’s version later, and leapt into the anecdote of the slung pan and Johnny’s departure.

  Twenty thousand words, Judith had said. That, and pictures, would fill the two hundred and fifty pages she’d said they had to fill. There had been something of a disagreement between them over pictures, but it seemed like Charlie was going to get his way.

  ‘Hand drawn, like those great cookbooks. Elizabeth David and Simon Hopkinson.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me, darling, I published them both. Okey dokey, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll send Kerry down for a day to take a look. Kerry Matheson. The best food illustrator in the business. She’ll know what to do. Front cover a line drawing of Belle Hotel and maybe some chef’s knives or cloches for the cover, but we’ll have eight full-page colour photos. No discussion.’

  Charlie finished thumping in the recipe and was stumped. What to write next?

  ‘Penny for them?’ It was Lulu.

  ‘Oh, Lu, well I was just thinking about Franco. And Eggs Benedict. Well actually I was just thinking about Baron of Beef. To tell you the truth, I was wondering where the crêpes Suzette trolley had got to.’

  ‘Under the champagne rack in the cellar.’

  ‘How the fuck d’you know that?’

  ‘I put it there, remember? How’s the book going?’

  Charlie showed Lulu his flickering cursor.

  ‘That it? Typical, Charlie, I can see I’m gonna have to help you. As usual. Here, shift up.’

  Lulu lifted the lid of the reception desk and climbed in. She’d not been this close to him since the night on her houseboat. Apart from the fight, but Lulu was trying to block that out. Charlie did his best to disguise his pleasure. It was just her smell, the hint of lavender in her hair and the jut of her breasts against the black cotton top.

  Two Soho Bohos wafted through the lobby. The blonde winked at Charlie, who pretended not to notice.

  ‘Can you ever stop it?’

  ‘What, Lu?’

  ‘The tarts.’

  ‘Yes, I can stop. If you—’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What we need is some sort of order.’

  ‘Lu?’

  ‘A recipe and an anecdote, that sort of thing. Like we did for the first thousand. We can write them as separate Word documents. Here, I’ll put them in this BHC Folder.’

  ‘What’s BHC?’

  ‘Belle Hotel Cookbook, dummy.’

  Charlie leaned in slightly in this token of affection. Lulu elbowed the token back.

  ‘Oi, not while we’re working.’

  ‘You’re working for me.’

  Lulu glared. Charlie broke out into a broad smile.

  ‘Old Charlie, just teasing. Why don’t we write the book together and it can say The Belle Hotel Cookbook by Charlie Sheridan, with Lulu Hardman.’

  ‘With?’ Lulu raised an eyebrow.

  ‘And.’

  She typed on, neat French polish on grimy English keyboard.

  ‘Okay, crêpes Suzette. Even I know that one. The day Franco set the place alight.’

  ‘He swore blind I’d over-boozed the sauce.’

  ‘That’s the kind of thing. You got the recipe handy?’

  ‘Here, where it should be. Like you, Lu. I’m sorry I was a dick about you being pregnant. It’s just I was scared and I got some stuff mixed up that meant… well, just know I got some stuff mixed up.’

  ‘I know. Now shut up and let me type.’

  One hour later, another thousand-word section of The Belle Hotel Cookbook had been put to bed and a closer working relationship established between Charlie and Lulu, who now fully understood why Franco and Charlie had been so tight. This news, like her pregnancy, would take some time to soak in. Back to work. What else was there?

  First, he read out the recipe.

  Crêpes Suzette

  1 tbsp caster sugar

  For the sauce:

  Juice & zest of 4 oranges

  Rind & juice of 1 lemon

  1 tbsp caster sugar

  Slug brandy

  Knob butter (unsalted) for frying

  Grand Marnier for flaming

  Charlie talked her through some amendments he’d made to Franco’s original recipe, such as burning off some of the alcohol in the brandy, and together they embellished the tale of the flaming chandelier.

  ‘Say there were five fire engines. They always call out three, you want to pile it on a bit. And say it was 1997, it’ll remind everyone of when we were swinging. Oh yes, and singe his eyebrows. That’s always good for a laugh.’

  Lulu pinged the document shut and stretched back.

  ‘Two down, eighteen to go. If we keep up this work rate, you’ll be done by Christmas.’

  Charlie asked Lulu to come to the family lunch on Monday. Now that Lu was in the Sheridan family way it seemed the right thing to do.

/>   ‘I’ll think about it, Charlie. Shall we do another one?’

  ‘You bet. I’ll talk you through shepherd’s pie. Can’t have The Belle Hotel Cookbook without that.’

  Lulu kissed him on the cheek.

  You can’t un-tell the fact that the previous generation chose not to tell. Lulu typed while Charlie tried to describe it, something about a family business and the family bond. You are working together and you are family. Family is work and work is family. Family business is the business of Belle Hotel and the business of family. That was the complicated bit. The bit that was harder to bind into Franco’s book.

  Lulu wanted to stick with her idea of twenty recipes and they made their way, that day, through two further dishes, keeping Franco’s book close to their sides. They talked about the recipes, they talked about the past and Lu noticed the painting. She’d looked at it on credit-crunch day, but barely taken it in.

  The painting of Franco and Janet and a cat, hung out of the way over the key rack. Lulu remembered it from her years as a waitress at Belle Hotel, but she’d taken no notice of it then. Now, with her London years under her soon-to-be expanding belt, she knew instantly that it was a Hockney. David Hockney. Sure of it.

  ‘If that is a one hundred per cent bona fide Hockney, Charlie, that’ll be the overdraft taken care of.’

  They went to ask Janet and, she confirmed that yes an artist friend had settled his account with a canvas. Janet remembered the sitting, now you came to mention it. Late afternoon in the bar. Her at the pumps and Franco posed on the zinc surface. Charlie and Lulu driving her nuts. The cat? Maybe he’d painted it in on a whim. Artists.

  Hookes Bank

  TWO-DAY WARNING

  Charlie Sheridan

  Belle Hotel

  Ship Street

  Brighton

  16 October 2008

  Dear Charlie,

  Confirming a credit into your account within the ten-day period set by the bank in lieu of calling in all overdrafts and loans against Belle Hotel and repossession. I hereby confirm: