Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies

by Nick Frost

  My mum is genuinely concerned, she files a missing person’s report, the police come round, take his stuff and promise to make enquiries. Mum decides to let his work know. His work being the Anti-Terrorist police in Northern Ireland. She makes a lot of calls and tracks down, eventually, a man who Pat claimed was his C/O. This man knew nothing about Pat. He had never heard of the man Mum described.

  I thought he was either a spy or a member of a terrorist organisation. A sleeper. Either was bad for me. For a long while I truly believed someone would knock on my door and I’d be killed. I’d seen too much. Also what was all that bullshit when he busted the pill dealers? How the fuck did that go down? The coppers there treated him like one of their own. And the scar! What the eff was that? Who was this man I’d befriended in Israel? I didn’t know him at all.

  It didn’t help my conspiracy paranoia one bit. The trail then goes cold. Days become weeks become months. My fear subsides. My mind quietens. Years later and I mean, like, six years later, I get a phone call from Mum. She’d heard something about Pat. The police had contacted her after all this time. Pat was not a copper. Pat was not a terrorist. Pat was a professional conman. Holy. Fucking. Balls. A conman.

  It turned out I was not his first stop after Israel and I wasn’t his last. After he fled mine, leaving everything, he made his way to Sweden, obviously with another fake or forged passport, to hook up with a girl he’d met in Israel. She was a lovely woman. She was gentle and quiet, and suffered from a severe lack of confidence, probably due to the fact she was really quite big.

  He seduced that poor girl, told her he loved her. Once she was in love that’s when he closed the trap, got her poor gran to sign stuff over, lend him thousands of kronor. Then he left. I don’t know who he went to after that but it went on. Eventually he’d been caught and ended up going to prison for a fairly long time.

  Part Three

  At some point Mum and Dad get the nod from the council to say their house in Wales was ready. She was going home, I was homeless. Nice. I know it wasn’t as cut and dried as that but that’s how it felt then. But despite the fact that I was soon to be on my own, I was thrilled Mum and Dad had the chance to leave Ray Lodge – a stark, modern construct and a reminder of their failings as people and as parents.

  Rachel, the free spirit, had come to live in London, in a kind of squat-thing in Golders Green known to me simply as ‘Golders’. I want to be near her so I head there. I’ve no friends and no mum and dad back in Woodford Bridge and I need somewhere to live, somewhere to work and I definitely need some cheddar so I go to Golders Green.

  The house was a big old lump of a place sitting on top of a kosher bakery. It was a madhouse and a shit hole, but it smelled nice. It had four large bedrooms and a kitchen that was usually the centre of high jinks. The loft had also been converted into a living space. I never went upstairs and never met anyone who lived up there. I knew they were there because at night I could hear them moving around, whispering.

  All in all I think twenty-five people lived in that place, crammed inside on top of one another. Each room had five or so people plus the whispering loft dwellers. That meant the house was always happening, it was noisy, the place never slept. (Except at night.)

  The people who’d been at Golders the longest got the best rooms; when someone left everyone moved up a space, better room, bigger bed.

  I was the last to arrive so I got the smallest bedroom although it wasn’t actually a bedroom, it was a cupboard. It had no windows and instead of a door a kind of plastic shower curtain. It was a shower curtain. The room was so narrow that the thin single mattress which was my bed bent up the sides of the walls. I felt like a hot dog sleeping in a bun.

  I wasn’t in that cupboard long. There was a fairly swift turnaround of folk with people coming and going. It’s what I’d become used to. A space came up in one of the rooms and I took it. I was enjoying life at Golders and my on-again off-again thing with Rachel. There were five of us crammed into a bedroom, but a good five. Me, Sarit and CJ, Lauren and, I think, Jo, Rachel’s mate.

  Sarit was a beautiful but very fiery Israeli. CJ was a tall, beautiful male model from Socal with an easy smile and big booming laugh. They were girlfriend and boyfriend. Like a lot of beautiful Israeli women, she was hard work. She often sent CJ out at three o’clock in the morning to get treats. He always obliged. What a good egg. I’m not sure I would’ve.

  Lauren was nice, she was a London girl through and through with West African heritage. She was chippy and had a laugh that always made me smile.

  For a young man, living with Lauren could be tough. I’d never met anyone who was so brazen and open about their body and nakedness before. After showering she’d come back into the room where I was trying to plough my way through Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward and towel dry and oil her bare, lovely, giant African breasts. It was amazing. I didn’t know where to look. I was barely out of my teens at this point and although Israel had opened my eyes I still had a lot to learn.

  One night Lauren and I decided to take a shit load of mind openers and explore the mysteries of the universe, laughing like fucking idiots. We sat in the kitchen looking at each other change and morph as the sun came up. Briefly I became an African girl and briefly she became an overweight white man. How we laughed. The door to the house opened at about 5.30 a.m. and a complete stranger walked in. This wasn’t odd, the door was never locked and people would often come and go.

  This stranger was a woman in her thirties, pencil thin with a big helmet of bright orange hair. She smiled and joined us at the table. Was this happening? It was. Cope. Breathe. I’m African once more and I cluck and suck my teeth. We both look at her, eyes wide, she fumbles uncomfortably. One of my eyelids droops down and briefly obscures my view. I lift my eyelid up with both hands and the woman then makes a noise. It is long and it sounds like she is saying the word buuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrdddddddddddooooooo. There is no such word in my language. I don’t think there is such a word in any language. I look to Lauren for reassurance and support and discover she is no longer there.

  Lauren runs away screaming at about the third ‘u’, leaving me sweating and trying to lift my big floppy eyelid back over my head so I can see. I smile and back away into a cupboard, the cupboard is tiny and it forces me to re-emerge briefly. I smile and a tooth falls out. I turn and run up the stairs. Later I sadly find out the poor woman was there to meet a friend who was taking her to the airport, she was also profoundly deaf. It was too much for our brains to take. Poor girl. What idiots.

  ***

  I began working at Chiquito Mexican restaurant at Staples Corner when I was twenty. Let me, off the bat, state for the record that when I began working there it served the finest Mexican food to be found anywhere in London. All the sauces were handmade fresh every morning by an army of brawny Ugandans. Now, sadly, it’s an absolute abomination, just my opinion you understand. What a shame we live in a shitty world where the phrase ‘Brand Standard’ is commonplace. Anyhoo . . .

  I began working on the bar at Chiquito sometime in the summer and really liked it. I only planned to stay there for three months until I got my shit together, whatever that meant – it felt more like something to say to convince myself that I wouldn’t be there for five years, which of course I was.

  It would also be the first place I actually set eyes on my heterosexual life partner, best friend and godfather to my son, Mr Simon Pegg. I’m jumping ahead of myself though.

  Restaurants, like kibbutzim, have a high turnover of staff or ‘Fresh Meat’ as we liked to call them. At this point I was fresh meat. At first I was partnered with another bartender, known as Wavy Davy. An angry Kiwi who seemed to hate his job, his life and especially the customers. That said, he was a good egg at heart and certainly fun to work with. I’d never known anyone be so cheeky to customers. It was all about the tips. I loved his catchphrase ‘you flaming ball-bag’, it was a real winner.

  Dave showed me around the big walk-in fridges and
freezers, it was a place I’d get to know intimately over the next few months. Sometimes if I was mega hung-over I’d pull a chair into the fridge and sit there wishing I was dead.

  The first time he showed me round the big freezers he pulled out a tray of frozen ice cream balls covered in cornflakes and bit into one like an apple. These were the deep-fried ice creams, an important part of Chiquito’s elaborate birthday treat that all customers got if it was their birthday. He bit into it and stuck it back on the tray. I’d never seen lunacy like it. A few days later I found myself alone in the freezer. Wanting to be as cool as Dave I grab an ice cream and stuff it in my mouth. Sadly though it wasn’t an ice cream. It was a ball of frozen shrimp butter. It was horrid and I vowed I would never randomly eat frozen balls of unknown matter again. It’s a promise I have never broken.

  The most fascinating part of the whole place for me was the kitchen. As you kicked open the flappy ‘In’ door you came upon the kitchen proper, we called it the Line. It was not for the faint of heart. Many was the time I’d seen bad waitresses made to cry by good cooks. A bad waiter can fuck shit up very quickly in a busy kitchen. A couple of times too I’d see some low-level violence, angry waiters pulling cooks through the line. People would have to jump in to stop it going any further. When, years after, I worked in the kitchen myself, I lost my shit with a waiter one Sunday and ended up pulling him through the line! The key is to strike fast, get a nice tight grip and then lean back and stand up. The waiter comes right through; if you’re lucky you drag them across the beans and sauces and they end up looking like an oil painting.

  On the far right of the line was starters, next to that the section where all the dishes were garnished, and just behind was the heart and anus of the kitchen, a very big, very hot griddle. Next to this there’s a section where soft tacos and burritos are prepared. Throw in a couple of big ovens and the odd salamander grill and you get a picture of what the line looked like. On the far left was the pot wash. This was the home of Karim, a stick-thin Ugandan man who had the singing voice of an angel and spoke little or no English. The only thing I ever heard him say was, ‘Can I have cheeseburger’ – they fed us a staff meal every day and a cheeseburger was always his. I caught him lots of times eating scraps off the plates, something we’d all indulge in every now and then. Who could resist a juicy shrimp?

  The only other interaction I had with Karim was a curious one: he’d hunch over like an old man and shuffle towards me in his ever-present Wellie boots, he’d then grab me in his thin but exceedingly strong arms and pretend to jerk me off, while making this noise, dibbydibbydibbydibbydibby. We’d all howl with laughter. Why?

  But for now the bar was my realm, it’d be three more years before I made the move back of house. There were two sections to the bar, customers and service. Service meant you only made drinks for the waiters and their tables. On the weekend it was bedlam. The little bar printer would beep and puke out a ticket and another and another and another; if you weren’t fast enough you’d end up with a bunch of very cross waiters all demanding their drinks first.

  Wavy Davy never had a problem with demanding waiters, he was more than happy to tell those ‘flaming ball-bags’ to get fucked. On a busy weekend I liked it very much, I liked the buzz and the pressure. Double shifts were cool but long as it was busy most of the day. The bar was not the place to legally make a lot of tips. If you wanted to potentially earn £100 a day for a busy double the floor was where you needed to be. That’s where the action was, the glamour.

  I started working for £1.92 an hour plus tips. It was nothing but I didn’t need much as I paid hardly any rent. Any money I earned went on weed, drinking and cabs. I never went on holiday, I didn’t have a car or kids, I didn’t really need or want much. Chiquito was my life right now, I needed nothing except what it gave me.

  Unlike people I went to school with, faces from the old neighbourhood and even most people from kibbutz, some of the people I met in Chiquito became friends I still know today.

  Big Red was a man with the words ‘Fuck You’ tattooed inside his lower lip. Red was a cunning little silver fox, he always had an angle, a way to make a quick buck, a way to stick it to the man with a scam. He was with a girl called Chicky, a real beauty with a great laugh, she was lovely and we got on well. She was like my big sister. They were a great couple, great people and they really looked after me. Chicky and Rachel were great friends who knew each other before Israel, so we all hung out a lot. I think I attended my first dinner party in their house. It was a very mature thing for me to do, I may even have managed to wear trousers. They had a small flat down Kilburn way crammed to the rafters with cool shit. They were stylish, cool people.

  Chicky was there the day me and Rachel split up for good. Rachel was going to LA to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. The day before she left there’d been a horrible misunderstanding about a used condom she found in my bedroom. She accused me of cheating on her. I hadn’t but she found my ‘posh wank’ excuse hard to swallow.

  Racked with sorrow, me and Chicky sat up all night drinking in their flat. Red, who’d left the restaurant to become a milkman, got up at four to do his round to find us still up. At about five and after many tears Chicky convinced me that going to Heathrow to say goodbye was a good idea, a grand romantic gesture. Yes! I was all about those, great idea. I have a vague recollection of us being in a car at one point, and then we were magically at Heathrow.

  Rachel was really happy to see Chicky. Not so much me. It could’ve had something to do with the ironing board and bottle of Captain Morgan I’d insisted on bringing. Rachel’s mother was also there. She hated me. I hid, trembling behind the ironing board until Rachel had gone. That board definitely had its uses.

  On the way past, her mother hissed at me, ‘I feel really sorry for you.’

  I wasn’t sure what she meant but I took it to heart and cried all the way home. What was I crying about? Stupid drink.

  Sometimes on busy nights Chicky, a trusted employee, would work in the cash booth, a little cupboard in the corner of the kitchen where we’d drop off the bills and money after the tables had paid. Once you were in there you had to stay in there. Security, you understand.

  One particular Saturday, and this was rare for me, I had the whole day off. I arranged to meet a mate who also happened to be my general manager at the time. We went to drink in a shit pub up in North Finchley, pints and pool being the order of the day. After about an hour a shifty cunt approaches and offers me a magical and ancient laughing compound. I gratefully accept.

  He limps off, returning ten minutes later, and discreetly drops the package into one of the pockets of the pool table. Real cloak and dagger shit. The package rolls into the body of the machine and is lost. He returns ten minutes later and, forgetting all the subterfuge, decides to simply put it in my hand. We consume the HaHas and wait for Christ to arrive.

  At one point my GM suggests we go back to the restaurant and drink free shit and have a fajita or two. The Toucan and me agree this is a good plan and we float off into the sky. When we get there the place is calming down a bit, still busy but manageable. I wonder for a moment if anyone else can see this Toucan?

  We sit in a corner of the bar. He drinks beer and I gulp a giant strawberry margarita. Delish. Someone comes and tells me Chicky wants me to go and say hi. In the kitchen it’s bright and hectic and all the Ugandans shout the word ‘Woomla’ at me. This is actually true. The Ugandans on the line refer to me as the Woomla King. I can’t remember why but I like this alter ego.

  My big dumb grin arrives before I do and knocks on the cash booth door. Chicky opens up and beckons the rest of me to come in.

  ‘How fucked are you?’ she howls, laughing.

  I loved Chicky’s laugh, part dockworker, part geisha. My eyes roll and then focus on a button sort of hidden under the cash desk.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Panic button.’ Hahahahaha . . . we laugh.

  I’m panicking a
bit so I jab at it. Janine now panics a bit too, but she’s laughing and is quickly calmed by my confidence that it doesn’t do anything. As she’s laughing I jab at it again and again. We chat briefly and she reminds me I shouldn’t have my spirit bird in the kitchen. I understand. We have a little cuddle and I move out to finish my giant red drink.

  As I kick open the swingy both ways door I’m met by the sight of twelve armed policemen steaming through the front door of the place. The button worked. I look to the boss who seems really cross with me. The Toucan stifles a giggle and pecks a nut open on my head.

  ‘It was me! I leant on it by mistake!’ I fess up immediately. Honesty is definitely the best policy when confronted with firearms I find.

  I’m frogmarched outside and given a very stern dressing down. I’m so glad they can’t see the Toucan. A rare and endangered bird such as this could bring me a shit load of trouble. The Toucan winks at me and pops a nice ripe berry into my mouth and we smile, he nuzzles my ear with his beak and right then I know we’ll be okay. They buy it and leave. Sorry SWAT team, totes my fault.

  This sadly was not my last brush with armed police, there was to be what has now become a legendary story – when I say legendary it just means I’ve told it a lot. In terms of the timeline I’m jumping way ahead here but what the fuck, I like telling it.

  We were shooting series two of Spaced and there’s a scene where Mike Watt TA strips an MP5 sub-machine gun blindfolded. Being a bit Method and knowing Edgar would take great pleasure from me learning how to do it properly they got one of the on-set armourers to take me through the process of stripping and rebuilding the weapon. He’d even kindly taken some Polaroids at every step for me to follow when I got home. They were letting me take this home . . .

  I shoot the first scene of the day and then wonderfully I’m wrapped. Incidentally, the word WRAP on a film set is an acronym for Wind Reel And Print. A throwback to the early days of film-making. Yawn. Sorry, but I find all that a bit cool, some continuity in film-making that runs across the generations. That sound I hear of film running through the gate, or used to hear before film started being used less and less, is the same sound Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton heard when they filmed. I think there should be a button on the new digital cameras that reproduces that sound. Anyway . . .