It did not worry Mark that his uniform didn’t fit or that his room was six foot by six foot and overlooked Charing Cross Station, or even that he didn’t get a share of the tips; but it did worry him there there was nothing he could do to please the head porter — however clean he kept his nose.
Sergeant Crann, who considered the Savoy nothing more than an extension of his old platoon, didn’t have a lot of time for young men under his command who hadn’t done their national service.
‘But I wasn’t eligible to do national service,’ insisted Mark. ‘No one born after 1939 was called up.’
‘I’m not interested in excuses, lad.’
‘It’s not an excuse, Sarge. It’s the truth.’
‘And don’t call me “Sarge.” I’m “Sergeant Crann” to you, and don’t you forget it.’
‘Yes, Sergeant Crann.’
At the end of each day Mark would return to his little box-room with its small bed, smaller chair and tiny chest of drawers to collapse exhausted. The only picture in the room — of the Laughing Cavalier — was on a calendar that hung above Mark’s bed. The date of September 1, 1960, was circled in red to remind him when he would be allowed to rejoin his friends on the factory floor. Each night before falling asleep he would cross out the offending day like a prisoner making scratch marks on a wall.
At Christmas Mark returned home for a four-day break, and when his mother saw the general state of the boy she tried to talk his father into allowing their only son to give up the job early, but Arthur remained implacable.
‘We made an agreement. I can’t be expected to get him a job at the factory if he isn’t responsible enough to keep to his part of a bargain.’
During that short holiday Mark waited for his friends outside the factory gate until their shift had ended and listened to their stories of weekends spent watching football, drinking at the pub and dancing to Elvis Presley. They all sympathized with his problem and looked forward to him joining them in September. ‘It’s only a few more months,’ one of them reminded him cheerfully.
Far too quickly, Mark was on the journey back to London, where he continued unwillingly to hump cases up and down the hotel corridors for month after month.
Once the English rain had subsided the usual influx of American tourists began. Mark liked the Americans, who treated him as an equal and often tipped him a shilling when others would have given him only sixpence. But whatever the amount Mark received Sergeant Crann would still pocket it with the inevitable, ‘Your time will come, lad.’
One such American for whom Mark ran around diligently every day during his fortnight’s stay ended up presenting the boy with a ten-bob note as he left the front entrance of the hotel.
Mark said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and turned round to see Sergeant Crann standing in his path.
‘Hand it over,’ demanded Crann as soon as the American visitor was well out of earshot.
‘I was going to the moment I saw you,’ said Mark, passing the note to his superior.
‘Not thinking of pocketing what’s rightfully mine, was you?’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Mark. ‘Though God knows I earned it.’
‘Your time will come, lad,’ said Sergeant Crann without much thought.
‘Not while someone as mean as you is in charge,’ replied Mark sharply.
‘What was that you said, lad?’ asked the head porter, veering round.
‘You heard me the first time, Sarge.’
The clip across the ear took Mark by surprise.
‘You, lad, have just lost your job. Nobody, but nobody, talks to me like that.’ Sergeant Crann turned and set off smartly in the direction of the manager’s office.
The hotel manager, Gerald Drummond, listened to the head porter’s version of events before asking Mark to report to his office immediately. ‘You realize I have been left with no choice but to sack you,’ were his first words once the door was closed.
Mark looked up at the tall, elegant man in his long, black coat, white collar and black tie. ‘Am I allowed to tell you what actually happened, sir?’ he asked.
Mr. Drummond nodded, then listened without interruption as Mark gave his version of what had taken place that morning, and also disclosed the agreement he had entered into with his father. ‘Please allow me to complete my final ten weeks,’ Mark ended, ‘or my father will only say I haven’t kept to my end of our bargain.’
‘I haven’t got another job vacant at the moment,’ protested the manager. ‘Unless you’re willing to peel potatoes for ten weeks.’
‘Anything,’ said Mark.
‘Then report to the kitchen at six tomorrow morning. I’ll tell the third chef to expect you. Only if you think the head porter is a martinet just wait until you meet Jacques, our maître chef de cuisine. He won’t clip your ear, he’ll cut it off.’
Mark didn’t care. He felt confident that for just ten weeks he could face anything, and at five thirty the following morning he exchanged his dark blue uniform for a white top and blue and white check trousers before reporting for his new duties. To his surprise the kitchen took up almost the entire basement of the hotel, and was even more of a bustle than’ the lobby had been.
The third chef put him in the corner of the kitchen, next to a mountain of potatoes, a bowl of cold water and a sharp knife. Mark peeled through breakfast, lunch and dinner, and fell asleep on his bed that night without even enough energy left to cross another day off his calendar.
For the first week he never actually saw the fabled Jacques. With seventy people working in the kitchen Mark felt confident he could pass his whole period there without anyone being aware of his existence.
Each morning at six he would start peeling, then hand over the potatoes to a gangling youth called Terry, who in turn would dice or cut them according to the third chef’s instructions for the dish of the day. Monday sauté, Tuesday mashed, Wednesday French-fried, Thursday sliced, Friday roast, Saturday croquette... Mark quickly worked out a routine which kept him well ahead of Terry and therefore out of any trouble.
Having watched Terry do his job for over a week Mark felt sure he could have shown the young apprentice how to lighten his workload quite simply, but he decided to keep his mouth closed: opening it might only get him into more trouble, and he was certain the manager wouldn’t give him a second chance.
Mark soon discovered that Terry always fell badly behind on Tuesday’s shepherd’s pie and Thursday’s Lancashire hot-pot. From time to time the third chef would come across to complain and then would glance over at Mark to be sure that it wasn’t him who was holding the process up. Mark made certain that he always had a spare tub of peeled potatoes by his side so that he would escape censure.
It was on the first Thursday morning in August (Lancashire hot-pot) that Terry sliced off the top of his forefinger. Blood spurted all over the sliced potatoes and onto the wooden table as the lad began yelling hysterically.
‘Get him out of here!’ Mark heard the maître chef de cuisine bellow above the noise of the kitchen as he stormed toward them.
‘And you,’ he said, pointing at Mark, ‘clean up mess and start slicing rest of potatoes. I ’ave eight hundred hungry customers still expecting to feed.’
‘Me?’ said Mark in disbelief. ‘But—’
‘Yes, you. You couldn’t do worse job than idiot who calls himself trainee chef and cuts off finger.’ The chef marched away, leaving Mark to move reluctantly across to the table where Terry had been working. He felt disinclined to argue while the calendar was there to remind him that he was down to his last twenty-five days.