Nice Work (If You Can Get It)

by Celia Imrie

  ‘That would be him.’ Sally remained quiet about why Ted actually deserved any foul language he’d got from his wife, as she felt so ashamed that her own daughter was ‘the other woman’. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess.’

  ‘I’ll say.’ Jackie pressed the lid down on her box of sandwiches. ‘But after the little marital drama finished it was as though I’d never been there. I hung about, to say thanks and all that, but Sian just locked the car then chased after him, screaming at the top of her voice, and the pair of them disappeared up the hill. You could hear them yelling for some time. It was obvious she wasn’t coming back. So I left it at that and came home and went to bed.’

  The lights had all been out last night when Sally was dropped at her door by Stanislav’s driver. Jackie must have been already tucked up.

  ‘Did you try to call Sian this morning?’

  Jackie shuddered. ‘I’ll say. Got a right earful down the line. Anyhow, the upshot was that Sian told me she was too busy to do anything today. Which is smashing, Sally, ’cos I’d much prefer to be with you.’

  Sally couldn’t help smiling at Jackie’s clumsy attempt to flatter her.

  She wondered how the episode between Sian and Ted had ended, and also where it left her daughter Marianne. Sally realised there was no point phoning Marianne, as that was bound to make matters worse. Better to get out of town for the day.

  ‘I’d love to accept your invitation, Jackie. But I’m clearly not as brave as you. I don’t think I could face sitting among all the tourists on the train in full drag. Is there anywhere for me to change in the Palais?’ she asked. ‘If so, I’ll bring my clothes in a bag.’

  ‘No problem. If you don’t mind using the ladies’ powder room to get dolled up.’

  ‘Do we have to dress up for your film too, or can I come to that in civvies?’

  ‘My screening will be ultra-casual,’ Jackie laughed. ‘That’s the spirit, old girl. But it’s all guns blazing for the evening show. That’s the only place we have to dress posh.’ The wall clock struck ten o’clock. ‘Golly!’ said Jackie, grabbing her sandwich box. ‘Look at the time. I’d better be skedaddling. Train departs in five minutes.’ She pulled a card from her clutch bag. ‘Here’s the invitation and details of my screening this afternoon. Don’t be late!’

  Theresa and the others had dragged William out of the immobilier’s office before he reached the desk. Luckily for them all, there was an American couple ahead of him, going through brochures of lots of very expensive estates, and the solitary girl working there this morning was not going to let small fry like William interrupt the possibility of netting two such bigger fish.

  Theresa and Carol let Benjamin give the pep talk as they walked back down the hill to La Mosaïque.

  Zoe was resting against a bollard outside, holding her face up to the sun.

  ‘Looking forward to opening night,’ she said, giving them all a wave.

  ‘Really?’ said William, pushing open the front door of the restaurant. ‘You deal with it. I’m not in the mood.’

  Benjamin, Carol and William went inside. Theresa decided that it was worth keeping one potential customer sweet and stayed for a moment to chat.

  ‘We hope you’ll be a regular, Zoe,’ she said.

  ‘As long as you don’t serve that bright-green soup of yours.’ Zoe adjusted herself and brought up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘Too Exorcist-like for me.’

  ‘There will always be a choice on the menu.’ Theresa gazed out to the harbour. ‘Fresh fish, salads, puddings, I hope, something to please everyone.’

  ‘And can we pay in kind?’ asked Zoe, trying for a feline smile, which was rather limited, due to her recent lip filler.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ asked Theresa.

  ‘The old girl used to take things as payment. Saved herself a hefty tax bill, I should think, while cleaning up at auctions.’ Zoe lit a Gitanes.

  ‘She reportedly had little Picassos, van Dongens, Chagalls and Dufys stashed away at the back. There was a Léger on the wall in the dining room at one time, and a Cocteau. I remember a huge photo signed by Brigitte Bardot and Salvador Dalí and Grace Kelly and all kinds of glamorous types.’ Zoe took a puff of her cigarette. ‘Must have been worth a packet. What a girl! She was something else.’

  ‘Rather clever of her, don’t you think?’ Theresa felt excited again now, to think that they were opening a restaurant in a room where such celebrated people had once visited. ‘They must have loved her.’

  ‘Oh, she was clever enough,’ said Zoe, exhaling smoke through her nostrils. ‘But she was probably blackmailing them all. Terrible family connections, you know.’ Zoe stroked her nose and gave Theresa an old-fashioned look.

  ‘What kind of connections?’

  ‘Old Mama Magenta come from Sardeeenia.’ Zoe spoke in an exaggerated Italian accent. ‘I’d say eff you spent any time in her prezzence you’d ’ave been wise to hold on to your eahrrs.’

  ‘Do you mean the Mafia?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Zoe, her face deadpan. ‘But she was certainly part of a family of bandits and kidnappers, and they were all bound together by a secret code of honour.’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about her, Zoe. Why don’t you come inside and share some of your stories with the others.’

  Zoe gave the restaurant a glance.

  ‘I won’t, thank you all the same. But I’ll definitely be a regular for dinner . . . Once you’ve had the place exorcised.’

  ‘After it’s been sprayed with green soup, you mean?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Zoe looked at Theresa as though she was mad. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’ She stubbed out her cigarette with her shoe and moved away, shaking her head and chuckling to herself.

  Theresa walked over to the front door of La Mosaïque.

  The failed green-soup joke had reminded Theresa of what had slipped her memory, but was due to happen today – Thursday. She looked at her watch. They had about five minutes to get ready, but that was no worry, as the workmen had recently finished and the whole place was pristine.

  Today at eleven was the time of their first visit from one of the health inspectors.

  Theresa opened the door and entered, calling out: ‘Quick, everyone. Action stations! The health inspector is due to arrive at any moment.’

  But the tableau which greeted her rooted her to the spot.

  William cringed in a corner, stabbing frantically at his mobile phone; Carol, her face frozen in an expression of horror, held her gloved hands up to cover her wide-open mouth. She was whimpering.

  In the centre, at the threshold of the kitchen, stood Benjamin.

  Like the Cellini statue of Perseus and Medusa, Benjamin held his left hand aloft, while his face was turned away.

  Theresa gasped.

  The thing that shocked Theresa and the others was dangling from Benjamin’s hand.

  It was the bloody decapitated head of a pig.

  Part Four

  PANISSE CHIPS

  Ingredients

  2 teaspoons olive oil

  150g chickpea/gram flour

  salt and black pepper

  Method

  Grease a few saucers and arrange them in a row. Boil 500ml of water in a pan with a pinch of salt and the olive oil. Slowly pour in the chickpea or gram flour, stirring all the while. Keep stirring and in 5 or more minutes the mixture will thicken. Pour it into the saucers, filling right to the top. Take care, as the mixture sets very quickly. Leave to set and put in the fridge for a while to cool, then slide the individual panisses off the saucers and slice them into chips. Deep-fry till golden. Drain on kitchen towel and serve with finely ground black pepper and salt ( NEVER ketchup!).

  19

  Sally had packed a small bag with her evening clothes and was heading for the door when the phone rang.

  It was Marianne, and she was in tears.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve done an awful thing.’

 
‘It can’t be that bad,’ said Sally, fearing the worst.

  ‘I hit Ted.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Sally took a seat. This was not going to be a short call. ‘Did you hurt him?’

  ‘He has a black eye.’ Marianne sniffed.

  ‘What did he do to deserve that?’ asked Sally, knowing that Ted had been here in Bellevue-Sur-Mer yesterday and trying to put two and two together. ‘And where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the Hôtel Astra.’

  ‘And where is Ted?’

  Marianne wailed down the line. ‘Gone!’

  ‘You’d better tell me all,’ said Sally, torn between her need not to be late to Cannes and being a good mother. She hoped in vain she might hurry her. ‘And how long have you been here without letting me know?’

  ‘He came in very late last night. After midnight. He told me he was going into Nice to see a film, so I wasn’t worried. He got into bed and then in the morning I saw that he had a black eye.’

  ‘Did you do it in your sleep?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t me, Mum.’

  ‘I thought you just said that you gave him the black eye.’

  ‘Wait, Mum. You never let me speak,’ Marianne continued. ‘It turns out he hadn’t gone to Nice at all but spent the evening chasing after his ex-wife . . . ’

  Sally just prevented herself in time from correcting her daughter and saying ‘wife’, because Sian and Ted were still married.

  ‘And he actually spent the evening with her, at their old home, and then she gave him a black eye so he came back to me.’

  Sally left a pause. It was obvious what was coming.

  ‘When I pressed him this morning, and got the whole story out of him, he admitted that he’d slept with her last night. So I hit him.’

  ‘And now what?’ asked Sally, hating being in the middle and dreading the knock on the door which might be Sian coming to tell her version of events.

  ‘I’m packing up and going back to London, of course. Without him.’

  ‘You could come down here and see me . . . ’

  ‘No, I could not, Mum. I’ve booked my plane ticket and the taxi should arrive any minute. I just wanted to talk to someone.’ Sally heard a voice in the background calling, ‘Taxi for Connor,’ then Marianne said, ‘Oh, and if you happen to see Ted, please will you tell him to drop dead.’

  20

  Benjamin managed to smuggle the pig’s head out in a black plastic bag just as the health inspector arrived.

  While William and Carol dealt with the inspector, Theresa and Benjamin debated how it had got there.

  It seemed that while they were out of the restaurant this morning, somebody had let themselves in and left the pig’s head resting on the kitchen worktop in a pool of its own blood.

  ‘Who locked up?’ asked Theresa.

  ‘We were so concerned after William’s announcement, I wonder whether we left it to one another. And nobody actually did it.’

  ‘And, anyway, at the moment there is nothing inside worth stealing. The place is a shell.’

  ‘No one would break in to steal tables and chairs. There’s nothing else.’

  ‘From now on we make better security provisions.’

  ‘Perhaps we need an alarm,’ said Carol, joining them as the inspector had his final few words with William. ‘Someone is clearly out to get us.’

  ‘More expense!’ said William, when they sat down to discuss things after the inspector had gone.

  ‘Better locks wouldn’t cost so much,’ said Carol. ‘It’s like being hunted. We need to protect ourselves.’

  ‘From whom?’ said Theresa, thrown into doubt about the project once more. ‘Or what?’

  ‘It’s not hard finding out, if we get the right system.’ Benjamin explained that video security wasn’t that expensive these days. ‘We can link it to our home computers,’ he told them. ‘Then we’d have them on film.’

  Suddenly Theresa saw a glimmer of light. ‘I understand that the very fact we’re talking security,’ she said, ‘means we are going to press forward with the restaurant and give it a go?’

  William gave a reluctant shrug.

  ‘Do you think it was Marcel or someone from the brasserie?’ asked Carol. ‘A kind of Mafia threat.’

  Benjamin was shaking his head. ‘Did they go out and kill the pig or did they just find it dead, then think what a good idea it would be to cut its head off and leave it here?’

  ‘Either way, it’s unspeakable,’ said William.

  ‘Whoever did it is perfectly ghastly,’ said Carol.

  Theresa had sat listening to them but mulling over her earlier conversation with Zoe. She spoke up. ‘Actually, Zoe was telling me this morning about some Mafia-like connections with the old widow.’

  ‘But she’s dead,’ said William. ‘If they had a grudge against her, why take it out on us?’

  ‘Maybe they’re taking it out on the grandson, Costanzo.’ Theresa looked out of the window and watched some tourists stroll by. ‘He still owns it, after all.’ She turned to Carol. ‘Could you get hold of him? Bring him in so we can talk to him about all this stuff?’

  ‘So that’s that matter discussed.’ William looked serious. ‘Are we all going to avoid any mention of the inspector’s visit?’

  Benjamin muttered under his breath, ‘Always the drama queen . . . ’ then said out loud: ‘Tell us . . . ’

  ‘He wasn’t a health inspector at all,’ said Carol. ‘He was here about the alcohol licence. We’re approved, and in two weeks he’ll give us the plaque, which we need to put up before we can sell drinks.’

  ‘Two weeks!’

  ‘That’s the law.’

  ‘Perhaps we should delay the opening.’

  William slammed his fist on the table. ‘We have worked like Trojans. And we will open, as advertised, on Sunday.’

  ‘Sunday. Three days. Come on.’ Theresa stood up. ‘We’d better get some bleach on all the places where the pig’s head might have dripped. I’m glad we kept the dustsheets down to protect the floor while the furniture was unpacked.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be hard to clean. The pieces are glazed. Better than wood, really.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Theresa was rolling up her sleeves. ‘Don’t know why, but that mosaic feels to me like our lucky mascot.’

  ‘Lucky or unlucky,’ said Benjamin, putting on a spooky voice. ‘Time will tell.’

  There was a knock on the door. It was another delivery. This time it was the brightly coloured blue, yellow and red, varying-sized plates, spanking-new pots, pans and sparkling cutlery. Later, neat wooden wine racks, a grey office desk and filing cabinets arrived to be carried down into the cellar, and boxes of fresh white tablecloths and napkins piled up near the door. Carol had suggested firmly that nothing beats the pleasing sight of bright-white napery, when Theresa had started getting carried away with the idea of trying to match even those to the colours of her ‘lucky’ mosaic floor.

  It took four of them the rest of the afternoon to unpack everything, and arrange it, ready, in the kitchen cupboards.

  It was getting dark when they decided to call it a day.

  ‘Night all,’ said Benjamin, sitting down on the floor. ‘I’m your security guard for the evening. And tomorrow morning I’m afraid I’ll be taking time off to buy a security system.’

  There was no arguing with him. Theresa and Carol waved off William, who was heading up to his place to get blankets and pillows, and walked across the street towards Theresa’s apartment.

  Carol grabbed Theresa’s arm.

  ‘There are people hiding by your gate. Look!’

  Theresa could see shadowy figures moving about, apparently crouching down, behind the low wall.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Theresa pulled out her phone, ready to dial 17 for the police, as they edged nearer.

  ‘There’s a whole gang,’ said Carol. ‘We wouldn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘After that pig thing . . . ’ Theresa started to stab in the numbers. ‘Al
lô!’ she said into the phone. ‘Police?’

  One of the shadowy figures stood up and hollered: ‘Mummy? Where the hell have you been?’

  By the time she had finished her conversation with Marianne, Sally knew she would be late. She grabbed her bag and ran for the train, only to watch it disappearing into the rock tunnel. It was nearly an hour before the next one arrived.

  Once she was in Cannes, Sally hurtled through the streets, careering down through the town towards the Palais des Festivals.

  She ran to the main entrance and presented her ticket for Jackie’s film showing.

  A guard blocked her way.

  ‘Your pass?’

  ‘What pass?’

  ‘You need to have a pass before we can let you inside the building,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to go down those stairs to the registration hall.’

  Sally stumbled down the stairs, following the signs.

  ‘I need a pass,’ she said, holding up her ticket to the screening.

  ‘Do you have screen credentials?’ asked the supercilious woman at the desk.

  ‘I don’t want to join the festival,’ explained Sally. ‘I just need to get it to view my friend’s film.’

  ‘This is strictly professionals only,’ said the woman. ‘Name?’

  ‘Sally Connor,’ said Sally.

  After a minute or two of the woman fiddling around on her computer she said, ‘No. No profile. You are not in the cinema business.’

  ‘But I need to . . . ’

  ‘No!’ said the woman.

  Sally walked away from the desk, her mouth dry. Why hadn’t Jackie thought of this?

  She started slowly to climb the steps back to the street. Then suddenly had an idea and went back to the desk.

  This time a young man came to assist her.

  ‘The name’s Sally Doyle. I left the business some years ago, but I am returning to work on a project and am expected at a screening, which I helped to finance, and which starts in approximately four minutes.’

  The young man stabbed at his computer.

  ‘Oh lord!’ he said. ‘You have been out of show business for a long time.’