The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted

by William Coles

  ‘Okay.’ I can’t say I was overly impressed. Perhaps intrigued at the prospect of waiting on a rock star for three or four days, but awestruck? Absolutely not.

  ‘Now I want you to treat him just like any other guest in the hotel,’ Anthony said.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Except… be careful.’

  ‘Be careful?’

  ‘Exactly. Be careful.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll be careful.’ I had no idea what Anthony was alluding to, but I supposed that he was trying to tell me that Ed McKenny was, like most rock stars, as mad as a hatter.

  ‘Great,’ Anthony said, rubbing his hands together. ‘By the way, watch McKenny with the waitresses. Don’t let them anywhere near him. Oliver can work on his table. You can work on his table. But nobody else goes near him.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because I know what he’s like.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Just me working on the table, and Oliver if we want a bowl of boiled potatoes thrown into his lap.’

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  The rest of the staff stared at me as I joined them in the middle of the dining room. ‘What was all that about?’ Darren said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He said my waiting skills had been exemplary.’

  ‘So what did he say?’ Tracy asked.

  ‘Told me to stop flirting with all the waitresses. I said I just couldn’t resist myself.’

  Michelle looked at me. ‘Did he really say that?’

  Darren rolled his eyes. And the first of our proper paying guests came into the dining room.

  There was a nice edge to that evening. The guests were excited at coming down to the Knoll House for the first day of their Easter break and the staff were eager to be put through their paces. That first night, there was a lot of champagne being drunk.

  I’d had about four of my tables in and was pouring out some house red when I sensed this frisson go round the room. There was a lull in the general hubbub. I noticed my guests’ gaze drift towards the entrance of the dining room. I knew immediately that my rock star had arrived. I finished pouring the wine and left the bottle on the table.

  Anthony was escorting Ed McKenny to his table. The star was with three other people and his every move was being covertly watched by at least half the room.

  Anthony drifted towards me as he went off to welcome the next batch of guests. ‘Go to, Kim.’

  I gathered up four menus and went over to the Enid Blyton table. ‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘Welcome to the Knoll House Hotel.’ I gave them a warm smile and looked at them all in turn. There were two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who I guessed were McKenny’s children. They were quite trendily dressed and the girl was pretty. She was about eighteen and she smiled at me. There was also a toned young woman with a blonde bob, in her twenties. She wore a very short skirt and was dressed for a holiday in Barbados rather than a chilly Easter break in Dorset; she was gorgeous and moody and she took the menu without looking up. I looked at McKenny. It was the first time that I had ever seen a rock star up close. He was in his late forties, taller than I expected and quite trim. I remembered that in his time he’d been a martial arts fighter; he would periodically beat up any members of the paparazzi who had vexed him. McKenny had spent a lot of time on his hair, a thick thatch of black, which had been teased and tweaked until it looked as if he had been dragged through a hedge backwards. His face was lined, craggy – ravaged from too many drugs and drink and women and whatever other ways that McKenny had found to abuse his body. He was wearing yellow sunglasses. He looked at my name tag.

  ‘Hi Kim,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be looking after us?’

  ‘Certainly am, sir.’

  He pulled out an expensive black leather wallet from his jacket and opened it. He proffered two £50 notes to me. ‘That’s for taking good care of us,’ he said.

  I smiled. ‘There’s really no need,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after you just fine, even without the tip.’

  ‘No, take the money.’ Again, he thrust the notes at me.

  ‘Give it to the boss, if you like,’ I said.

  ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘It’s fine, honestly.’

  I was aware that we were going through a little power play. I did not want to immediately put myself in the position of being one of McKenny’s lackeys.

  He took back the notes and stuffed them into his pocket. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘I do, Mr McKenny.’

  ‘Call me Ed, then.’

  ‘I’ll call you Ed, then. Can I get you anything to drink?’

  ‘I want a bottle of vintage Krug, if you’ve got it.’

  ‘We certainly had it,’ I said. ‘We may have had a run on the vintage Krug tonight. If we don’t have any, I’ll see what I can rustle up.’

  McKenny took off his odd little glasses and looked at me. Sizing me up.

  ‘See what you can rustle up.’

  The other staff, particularly the waitresses, were agog to know what Mr McKenny had said to me. ‘He’s so gorgeous,’ Janeen said.

  ‘I wish I was waiting on his table,’ Tracy said.

  ‘You wouldn’t like him up close,’ I said. ‘Horribly lined. And he’s wearing yellow sunglasses.’

  ‘That’s because he’s a rock star,’ Tracy said, moony-eyed as she gazed over into the corner. ‘Rock stars can get away with any colour sunglasses they like.’

  ‘Even at night.’

  ‘I think he’s got sensitive eyes,’ Tracy said. ‘I used to have his poster up on my bedroom wall. They’re lovely hazel eyes. I used to kiss him on the lips before I went to sleep.’

  ‘I don’t want to spoil your fantasy, Tracy,’ I said. ‘But I’m not sure Ed has aged that well.’

  ‘He’s so sexy,’ Michelle said.

  Unlike the waitresses, the waiters were more circumspect. McKenny had what the rest of them all wanted: fame and glory and millions of pounds in the bank, as well as a sultry, brooding beauty of a girlfriend.

  I’d found McKenny his bottle of vintage Krug and poured it without mishap. The next time we chatted was when I was clearing away their main courses. Like Oliver, I had decided to take away two plates at a time, rather than go through the messiness of stacking at the table. McKenny had hardly touched his fish; I don’t think he’d even had a mouthful.

  ‘Was everything all right?’ I asked.

  McKenny flicked his hand dismissively.

  ‘What sort of music do you listen to?’ he asked.

  I stood there by the table with a plate in each hand. It was an unusual way to be holding a conversation. ‘I like Beethoven. I like Mozart. But most of all, I like Bach.’

  ‘Good old Johann Sebastian,’ he said.

  ‘Do you listen to much classical music?’

  The reaction of the three other diners was interesting. McKenny’s children were intrigued at how their dad was having a perfectly normal conversation with, of all things, a waiter. His lover looked at me for the first time – she really was extraordinarily beautiful –

  before staring out of the window. Her hands were exquisitely manicured and she wore a ring with a ruby that was the size of a hazelnut. How bored she seemed. What a waste: all that beauty, but no energy and not a spark of life to be seen. I wondered what they did for fun outside the bedroom.

  ‘I do listen to classical music,’ McKenny said.

  I smiled. ‘Wasn’t one of your tunes based on a Beethoven sonata?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He laughed. ‘Didn’t have to pay the bugger a penny in royalties!’

  ‘Must be the way forward,’ I said. ‘If the tunes still hold up after two hundred years, then they’re bound to be pretty catchy.’

  McKenny poured himself another glass of Krug. They were already on their third bottle. I noticed that he ignored his lover’s empty glass.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Favourite tune of all time. Give me your top three.’

  ‘Well-Tempered Clavier,’ I said p
romptly. ‘First book. Prelude Number 17.’

  ‘I don’t know that one,’ he said. ‘How does it go?’

  I sang a little bit of the tune. McKenny’s daughter smirked at her brother and then looked back at me. She was cute. I liked her.

  McKenny nodded. ‘There must have been a woman involved.’

  ‘There’s always a woman involved.’

  ‘And your two other tunes?’

  It was the first time that evening that I had seen McKenny animated. It was like watching an old snake slither from out of its rocky lair and slowly come to life as it basked in the morning sun.

  ‘Mozart concerto for two pianos, Kirkel Number 448.’

  ‘Kirkel 448? Remember that, Katie.’ He nodded at his daughter. ‘Another woman?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And for my last choice… Beethoven’s Pastoral.’

  ‘You didn’t pick that just because you liked it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was my mother’s favourite.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, discerning the great shadow in my life. He added with surprising delicacy, ‘Mums, God bless ’em.’

  ‘Will you try any of the puddings?’ I asked.

  ‘The kids will,’ said McKenny. ‘I don’t like sweet stuff any more. As I get older, I like my food sour and bitter and pungent.’

  I could not resist myself. ‘But you, however, stay as sweet as you always were.’

  He laughed, genuinely laughed, and his son and daughter laughed with him. The girlfriend tapped her fingers on the rim of her side plate. She was still looking out of the window. I could see her reflection in the glass; she was looking at me. Did I detect a hint of a smile?

  ‘I wish I had more people like you around me,’ said McKenny. ‘I could do with a court jester.’

  ‘Give me a grand a day and I’m all yours.’

  ‘I just might,’ he mused. As I looked at him, I though how ghastly it must be to be a genuine superstar, forever gawked at by strangers and surrounded by sycophants telling you just exactly what it is that they think you want to hear.

  ‘You couldn’t get me a double espresso?’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  The woman by the window turned to me. It was the first time that she’d looked at me. Thick mascara on the bluest eyes that I had ever seen. I don’t think I can recall ever seeing such beauty up close before. Her skin was absolutely flawless. She was only three or four years older than me, but so out of my league that she might have been on another planet. Oddly enough, that was distinctly to my advantage. Normally I am tongue-tied when I am in the presence of great beauty. My thoughts are scrambled and my tongue is rendered into a piece of flopping gristle so that I am not even capable of uttering the few inanities that I do wish to say. But this woman was so unattainable that I wasn’t even remotely cowed.

  ‘Can I have an americano, please?’ she said.

  I had already placed her accent. She was from Texas.

  ‘And an americano for the American,’ I said.

  There was a momentary intake of breath. ‘You’re good,’ McKenny said.

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself, Ed.’

  I went to get the coffees.

  It was to be the start of an intense and candid relationship that I was to develop over the Easter weekend with McKenny. It was the first time that I had ever been on quasi-casually intimate speaking terms with a superstar. Who knows what, if anything, McKenny got out of it. Perhaps some wit and spark that was not to be found in the rest of his pampered life.

  The next day was Good Friday and I was abruptly made aware of one of the more unpleasant aspects of working at the Knoll House: the early starts. How I hate early starts. I’d been out drinking again with Roland and Oliver, and had rolled into bed at twelve thirty.

  I had to be up at six, and be shaven, scrubbed and fed by seven, which was when the dining room opened for breakfast. Oliver was bright eyed, bushy tailed – he had a phenomenal capacity for drink –

  but most of the waiters were looking rough at the edges. In all my time at the Knoll House, we never once learned to pace ourselves, but instead, night after night, would be out on the tiles till midnight. That is the true optimism of youth.

  McKenny was one of the first people into the room. He was wearing drainpipe jeans and a tight white T-shirt. His hair, as the previous night, was all over the place.

  He knew the drill and helped himself to some apple juice. When I went over to his table, he was reading an array of tabloid papers.

  ‘Morning, Kim,’ he said. ‘How we doing?’

  ‘Good morning, Ed,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘What do you think of my girlfriend, then?’

  ‘She doesn’t say very much.’

  He sipped his apple juice. ‘No, Liz doesn’t say very much.’

  ‘Quite pretty though.’

  ‘Not much fun.’

  ‘Does Liz make you laugh?’

  At this, McKenny really did laugh. It started off softly, just a little chuckle, and then he was laughing so hard that he had to put his juice down.

  ‘Now that is a good question,’ he said. ‘Does Liz make me laugh? I’m not sure.’

  ‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she has other qualities.’

  McKenny was still mulling over my question. ‘Has she ever made me laugh?’ he said. ‘You know, I don’t think she has.’

  ‘What a sorry state of affairs.’

  ‘Not once, though, actually, there was the time she tripped over the cat and ended up covered in a jug of Bloody Mary. She was sitting there on the floor, with these bits of celery and lemon in her hair and a load of ice cubes in her lap. She hated it. Now that, that was funny.’

  ‘Definitely one for the video camera.’

  McKenny drummed at his lower lip. ‘But has she ever made me laugh genuinely? Through something she’s said?’ He looked at me and gave a shake of his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well,’ I tried to sound emollient, ‘a sense of humour is probably over-rated.’

  ‘But…’ He clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘What the hell am I…’ He trailed off. ‘What am I doing with this woman?’

  I shrugged, aware that it was probably best to keep my mouth shut. ‘Get you some coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  There was more banter that night. I had a very unusual role for a waiter. When I went to McKenny’s table, they seemed to come alive.

  I don’t know whether the children were cowed or whether Liz was bored by her older lover, but the conversation only ever seemed to spark up when I was lingering there. At the end of the meal, McKenny tried to get me to sit down and join them for a brandy, but I was having none of it. Apart from anything else, I was still waiting at three other tables.

  I got drunk that night and I got drunk the next night, same as I did every night at the Knoll House, and now we come to the crux, the moment upon which my whole story turns – and without it, who knows how it would all have turned out.

  Easter Day, 1988, is a date I will never forget till the day I die.

  Still fighting off my hangover, I was going through the motions in the dining room at breakfast. Once again, McKenny was alone and one of the first into the room. He was clutching onto the day’s tabloids. It was his third breakfast in the hotel.

  ‘Morning, Kim,’ he said. ‘You’re looking rough. Have a good one last night?’

  ‘I had an excellent one, thank you,’ I said. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘So where do you young spunks go drinking?’

  ‘The local pub, the Bankes Arms.’

  ‘Do you now?’ he said. ‘I might join you there.’

  ‘It’s not classy, you know.’

  ‘I don’t want classy. I’ve had it with classy. I want gritty. I want real.’

  ‘What will Liz will make of it?’

  ‘Yes.’ He drummed out a tattoo on the table with his index fingers; it was actually quite impressive. I didn’t know he could dru
m.

  ‘I’ll get that coffee.’

  McKenny had two coffees and two slices of toast and though he seemed absorbed by his papers, he was forever breaking off and would stare sightlessly into his empty glass of apple juice. He beckoned me over.

  ‘Kim,’ he said. ‘Me and Liz. What do you think?’

  ‘You’re a very handsome couple.’

  ‘You ought to be a diplomat.’

  ‘Probably got more chance of being a rock star.’

  ‘Any idiot can be a rock star. You just need a large slice of luck.’

  ‘True.’ I picked up his empty plate and his glass. ‘But you did ride your luck.’

  ‘And look where it’s got me.’

  ‘I can think of worse places to be, and worse people to be with.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  McKenny waved as he left the dining room. My colleagues were suitably awed. ‘I wonder what he’s like in bed,’ Janeen said.

  ‘Dream on,’ Darren said. ‘Have you seen his girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s pretty enough,’ Janeen said. ‘But I know how to please a man.’

  ‘Don’t you just.’ Darren lightly cupped Janeen’s waist.

  ‘How many lovers has he had?’ Tracy asked.

  I remembered what Casanova had once replied when asked the same question. ‘Mille Deuce,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that then?’ said Tracy.

  ‘Two thousand.’

  ‘Two thousand?’ Roland said.

  ‘He might have doubled up on a few of them.’

  ‘Lucky bastard,’ Roland said.

  ‘I’d still have him,’ Janeen said. She was looking at the French polish on her fingernails. It was at least a week old and was well chipped. ‘I’ve never had a star.’

  ‘And when he’s done, he could sing you one of his songs,’ Darren said.

  ‘Better than lighting up on a fag and blowing smoke in my face.’ She glanced meaningfully at Darren.

  I always used to enjoy the morning lull after breakfast. We’d have a coffee and read the papers and idle away our time sitting in the staff section of the dining room. In those first weeks, I was quite content to mooch around the hotel grounds, wander through the woods and revel in my new-found freedom. Of course, I still had to do my duty in the dining room, but outside those hours, I was free to do as I pleased, and not a soul to tell me otherwise.