Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  ‘And you’re an ugly twat,’ replied Des calmly, accepting his change from Joy.

  Ron stood up and tried to raise himself to his full stature but his neck had lost its grip on his head, which lolled loosely at Des’s right shoulder. ‘Whadya say, fat boy?’ slurred Ron.

  Des turned to Ron, smiling. He’s seen it all before. He leant into his face, ‘I said you’re an ugly twat ... but I’m sure your mother still loves you.’ He picked up his two drinks, kissed Ron on his forehead and walked outside before he had time to react. Ron touched his forehead and with a puzzled look sat back down.

  Suicide Sid was next in the firing line. ‘Joooooyyyy! One big beer,’ he rasped, plonking himself at his usual barrel. Ron’s head shot round, dropped to his chest and bounced back up again. ‘Aha! Is that a facking Kraut I hear? Oy, Kraut. Fack off back to your own country.’ Suicide was a little taken aback and looked pleasantly surprised that somebody had started a conversation with him even though he had no idea what was being said. ‘Please?’ he enquired, leaning forward.

  ‘Yeah, you’re not so fackin ‘ard now, are you, you Nazi wanker?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Think you’re ‘ard with your facking goosestep army but get you on your own and you’re facking shitting it, aren’t you?’

  ‘Faith? Please?’ Suicide was asking Faith to translate.

  ‘Okay Ron, leave him alone or we’re going to have to stop serving you,’ said Faith.

  ‘So you’re on their side now, are you? That’s facking gratitude for you. I fight the fackers off and you join sides with ‘em. Well you can fack off ‘n’ all.’ The early eaters, namely young families, had started to arrive in the bar. Joy, David and I were now stood around Ron.

  ‘Come on Ron. Go and sleep it off. There’s kids here now,’ said Joy.

  ‘Fack ‘em.’

  ‘We’re not serving you any more today Ron. You’ve had enough,’ I said.

  ‘Get me another drink.’

  ‘No, no more,’ said David.

  ‘I want a facking drink.’

  ‘No more. I’ll go and get Micky,’ I warned.

  ‘Don’t bring Micky into this, you cants. The only reason you’re still in business is because that soft fack doesn’t believe in shitting on his own doorstep. If it was up to me you’d all be fackin payin’ your way.’ With that, he slid off the barstool onto his feet, faced the open door and after a moment’s pause to line up a route, made unsteady progress out the bar, stopping momentarily to raise a finger at Suicide before deciding that he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He staggered into the early evening light still holding his finger aloft.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘So we were on the hit list.’

  ‘It’s a good job they moved into Forgreen’s house,’ agreed Joy.

  ‘But who’s JP? I heard them talking about JP’s lot coming in?’

  ‘No idea,’ said David.

  Faith had become visibly anxious with the confrontation. Her hands were shaking as she tried to light a cigarette.

  ‘Here, let me, love.’ A customer had come to the bar to order drinks and was in the process of lighting one himself. He took out a box of matches from his shirt pocket and pushed open the little door.

  ‘Aaaghh!’ shouted Faith. ‘Put them away.’

  ‘They’re just matches, look.’ The man held the box closer to Faith.

  ‘Get away, get away!’

  David snatched the box out of the man’s hand. ‘Here, have a lighter. She’s got a thing about matches.’ Faith had run into the ladies’ toilets, locking herself in.

  ‘Her nerves are shattered,’ David explained to Joy and me. ‘She’s not slept for two nights, says it’s too hot. Just give her a few minutes to calm down.’

  Eventually Faith returned to the bar. It was a slow start to the evening. A worrying sign as it meant that we would have a late rush. The heat was making people eat later, once the sun had gone down. I stayed behind the bar to help Faith whilst David dealt with the few food orders we had.

  She had just regained her composure, managing to force a smile here and there when she suddenly leapt back from the till with a muffled shriek. As Faith pressed the Enter button on the till, a mouse leapt from one of the coin compartments and landed on the glass shelf just below bar level in front of her. It rattled the glasses as it scuttled the length of the shelf then dropped to the floor and disappeared behind the bar fridge. Faith in the meantime had fled to the ladies’ toilet again, this time in tears.

  I swapped roles with David, cooking the food whilst he attended to Faith. Minutes later he was back in the kitchen. ‘She’s not coming out ‘til we’ve got rid of the mouse,’ he sighed. The bar had now begun to fill up as anticipated and the last thing we wanted to do was disturb the mouse, sending it scuttling out into the open.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do now,’ I said.

  ‘I know, I know. I told her that,’ said David. I agreed to swap places with Faith again so she could work in the rodent-free kitchen but things turned from bad to worse. Faith joined David just as the orders came flooding in.

  ‘Two chicken in wine, chips and salad. One pork chops, one mixed grill, two cheeseburgers, all chips, no salad. Steak rare, steak medium and two Hawaiian Burgers no mayo. All chips and salad. One pork chops with Canarian potatoes, one half-chicken, chips and salad. Two egg and chips. Two tuna salads, one no cucumber, extra tomato and one portion of chips.’ Joy was writing the orders on the wipe board stuck to the fridge door as she spoke. ‘Oh, and can I have two portions of chips ASAP.’

  Faith had her mind elsewhere and was falling behind with the garnishes, chips and washing up. David was starting to snap at her and the tension was rising.

  ‘I can’t keep up. I’m tired,’ complained Faith as David attempted to fulfil both roles.

  ‘Here, you take over with the cooking, I’ll do the prep,’ he said handing her the spatula. ‘Two chicken and wines on, first pork chops on. You need to make up the mixed grill and bash the steaks.’

  ‘Say it again,’ she said shaking her head. David started to repeat it, impatience in his voice but Joy was back interrupting with new orders.

  ‘Two mixed grills, one Canarians, one chips, salad on both and four steaks, three medium, one medium rare, all chips and salad. Then...’

  ‘Joy!’ shouted Faith. ‘I can’t concentrate. No more orders for a few minutes okay?’

  ‘I can’t stop people ordering,’ complained Joy. ‘There’s four tables with menus at the moment. Come on, step it up.’

  The sweat was pouring off both David and Faith as I brought them two pints of shandy. ‘Courtesy of table seven,’ I said. David was dashing from the microwave to the sink, arranging salads on the way. Faith was stood with her back to me, idly flipping one pork chop and one burger. I could see that there were at least 20 more meals to cook but Faith was in a daze.

  ‘You okay, Faith?’ I asked. David looked at me, then at Faith.

  ‘Faith! What are you doing? You’ve got a pile of orders stacking up and you’re playing with one chop and a burger.’ Faith turned round. Her eyes stared straight at David, then at me. There was no flicker of emotion, stress or otherwise. She had shut down mentally.

  Joy appeared in the doorway. ‘Table two want to know how long for... why is there nothing cooking?’ Faith was already untying her apron.

  The following morning when Joy and I came to open up the bar we found the security bars had already been removed, yet the doors were still locked. My immediate thought was that we’d been burgled.

  ‘There’s someone in there,’ whispered Joy, cupping her hand over her eyes. In the dark interior I could see toes sticking up from a bench behind table one in the far corner near the kitchen doorway. We tried unlocking the main door but the key wouldn’t turn. I could see that there was another key already in the lock on the inside. The Paddington Bear keyring was Faith’s.

  We banged on the window and Faith padded to the door, her short black
hair wildly askew on one side only. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry, I must have slept through the alarm. What time is it?’

  ‘Five past nine,’ answered Joy. ‘What are you doing sleeping here? Have you had a row?’

  ‘No ... it’s just cooler in here with the fans on. I can’t sleep in the apartment. I’ll see you later.’ She grabbed her shoes and strode out of the bar in her bare feet, still clutching the peach tablecloth she had used for a blanket.

  ‘She’s been sleeping there for the past week,’ said David, drawing deeply on a cigarette. His face had lost any trace of colour and his eyes bore witness to his own troubled nights. Arguments had become commonplace, subjects ranging from Faith’s role in the Smugglers to whether they should buy filter or non-filter cigarettes. Having agreed to move to Tenerife, albeit reluctantly at first, the root of the problem seemed to be about bullying. Faith was now saying she was bullied into coming and once here was being bullied by the rest of us.

  We had had this discussion with David before and several times had agreed to tread lightly when voicing our opinions, or rather, disagreeing with Faith’s. The truth of the matter was that my sister-in-law no longer wanted to be here but David was financially tied to the business. The decision had to be made whether she was prepared to leave David as well.

  David and Faith grew increasingly exhausted over the next 48 hours. Their eyes bore the red marks of too little sleep, too many tears. Faith had decided to leave, despite David’s pleas for her not to go. She argued that she didn’t want to move to Tenerife in the first place nor get married in circumstances that she felt had been forced on her. Now she found herself in a business partnership where she not only disliked the nature of the business but also where she wasn’t treated as an equal partner. She was leaving Tenerife and David for good. The marriage was over.

  On the morning of her departure we didn’t open the bar until 6 p.m., allowing David time to help Faith pack and take her to the airport. Joy and I didn’t see her before she went. Instead she wrote us a letter explaining her reasons for leaving and apologising if the decision left us in the lurch. It did, but the inconvenience was secondary to the rage I felt at her abandoning my brother.

  He came in to the bar at 7.30 p.m. and worked silently in the kitchen until the last order had been sent out. He left the bar with two bottles of red wine to return to an empty apartment, with his marriage in tatters. David’s bid for a golden opportunity had already cost him dearly. I wondered whether he had contemplated following Faith back to save his marriage or if he felt more compelled to stay with the business. Time would tell.

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘Surprise!’

  Joy was in the kitchen, scrawling down a breakfast order. She stopped writing on the fridge. I turned my back on the spitting eggs. The cavalry had arrived. In the doorway stood Carole and Faye, our mothers. Both had broad beams and outstretched arms as though welcoming back a long-lost relative.

  ‘Mum!’ Joy couldn’t hold back the tears, which instantly released a tide of emotion in Faye. My mum, never one to miss out on a good cry, dabbed tears from her eyes. I wiped away some sweat that had begun to trickle down the bags under my eyes. To a passer-by it may have given the impression that I was also crying.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, having removed the perspiration. When David had phoned to say that Faith had left, my mum telephoned Faye and they decided to fly over to lend a hand and give David some support for the last week of summer, adamant that they wanted to start straight away. Or at least after a gin and tonic. They sat down on table one beneath the only fan that still had the energy to respond to a ‘high’ setting.

  After wrapping paper napkins around 65 knives and forks, it was time for another gin and tonic. The bar had become progressively busier and three people were waiting at the bar whilst Joy was delivering lunches and clearing tables. Encouraged by the midday aperitifs, Carole felt compelled to go behind the bar to try to alleviate the wait. Whilst a noble gesture in theory, in practise she had overlooked the fact that she neither knew where all the requested drinks were located nor what to charge for the drinks once she’d hunted them down.

  ‘Two cokes, a white coffee and a pint of lager please, love,’ said the first man.

  ‘Uh ... okay. Jooooy?’

  Carole tried to flag Joy down as she dashed back and forth from the kitchen to the terrace. ‘Just a minute.’

  Faye could see that Carole was getting distressed and decided to join her.

  ‘How do you work this machine?’ she whispered to Faye.

  ‘No idea,’ said Faye.

  ‘Coffee won’t be a minute. What else did you ask for?’ said Carole brightly. ‘I guess this is the beer,’ she said, pointing at the beer pump.

  ‘Dunno. Try it,’ said Faye.

  Carole held a pint pot under the spout and pulled at the handle. The liquid hit the bottom of the glass filling the interior with white foam.

  ‘Hmm, beer’s lively today,’ she said knowingly. She’d heard that uttered on Coronation Street once. Carole passed the man an inch of pale yellow topped with five inches of froth. He held it up to his eyes, mouth ajar but before he could say anything, Carole had turned her back in pursuit of the coke. Both she and Faye searched in the beer fridges, on the shelves, under the sink but neither could locate it.

  ‘Jooooy?’

  Joy flashed past again. ‘Just a minute.’

  ‘Tae pins ena fissy pope.’ Faye had moved on to the next person waiting. The man stood at the bar shirtless, his bony body almost luminous in its whiteness. Faye was staring at him blankly. An uncomfortable silence developed before he repeated his order.

  ‘Assad tae pins ena fissy pope. Whirrsat ootie front.’

  ‘Can you speak Spanish, Carole?’ asked Faye looking over her shoulder. Carole had been a patron of Linguaphone for several years but was disappointed to find her tutorials to be of no use on this occasion.

  ‘Right, who’s first?’ Joy joined the parents behind the bar.

  ‘This Spanish gentleman,’ said Faye nodding at the exasperated man.

  ‘Hi Campbell, the usual? Two pints and a fizzy pop? You sat outside? I’ll bring it to you.’ Joy smiled. ‘They thought you were Spanish.’

  ‘Aye, a-spose a heave got that Latern look,’ said Campbell, stiffening proudly.

  Joy dealt with the three at the bar and then rushed back to the kitchen to answer the bell. Faye and Carole continued chatting until another customer interrupted.

  ‘Can I pay?’ asked the man.

  ‘Err ... sure.’ Carole turned the piece of paper around in her hands but couldn’t make any sense out of it.

  ‘Joooooy?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ came a muffled response from the kitchen.

  She passed it to Faye. ‘Where’s me glasses. I can’t see a thing without them.’

  ‘They’re on your head,’ said Carole.

  ‘Oh. Nope, still can’t make any sense out of it. Jooooy?’

  ‘Coming.’

  Both mothers graciously attempting to help without the slightest knowledge of knowing that what they were doing was causing Joy more work than it was saving. She suggested they go for a siesta and return for the evening rush. They obliged eagerly. A surfeit of midday gin and tonics had merely added to the spiralling confusion.

  David arrived with the two mothers at 7 p.m. to clock on for the evening shift. Thankfully the night started off quietly enough for us all to have time to show Carole and Faye various trivialities of the job such as how to pull a pint, how to work the till and how to succinctly write down an order in the kitchen without including too much detail on the diners’ backgrounds and interpersonal relationships.

  There were few problems with the British diners but Faye in particular appeared somewhat alarmed to discover that there were entire tables of foreigners lying in wait.

  ‘Hello, what would you like, love?’

  ‘Pardonez-moi. Parlez-vous Francais?
’

  Faye stepped back in horror as though she’d just confronted a man wielding a machete.

  ‘Who?’ she barked, then scuttled off in search of reinforcements.

  At 9.30 p.m. we made them sit down and take a break. Neatly coiffured hair had matted with perspiration and dissolving mascara was making a steady descent south. They looked like a couple of Alice Cooper fans.

  Opting to escape from the heavy heat, the two women flopped down at a table on the terrace. The two unoccupied white plastic chairs facing them flagged their ‘single’ status. I spied the two Johns coming down the stairs. Carole and Faye were sitting ducks.

  John One and John Two were both dressed in black. They were obviously on a mission. Like sharks to blood, they immediately honed in on the two women.

  ‘Evening, ladies,’ said John One, his eyes lingering as he made his way inside to the bar.

  ‘Evening,’ repeated John Two, as usual two paces behind.

  ‘My usual,’ shouted John One as he approached the bar.

  ‘Aye, my usual too,’ echoed his namesake.

  Joy handed them two halves with lime.

  ‘You’re putting a bit of weight on, lass,’ remarked John Two. He straddled a barstool. ‘It’s not a bad thing, mind. Men like a bit of something to get hold of. You could do with a bit more up top though, don’t you think, John?’

  ‘You’re right, John. You can never have too much up top. Bigger the better I say, eh? The bigger and bouncier, the better.’ They both began to chortle like year three schoolboys.