“How did you get my number?” I asked.
“Caller ID,” she said. “I didn’t think you people would have a number that was visible. More important, how did you get my number?”
I could hardly tell her the truth, but whatever else I said now was going to get me into deeper trouble. I decided to retreat gracefully.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I have to go now. Good-bye.” I hung up quickly. My hands were sweating. Really, really stupid!
I went out into the kitchen and found Carl trying to explain rather sarcastically to one of the kitchen porters that it was indeed necessary for him to get all the old food off the frying pans when washing up.
In spite of the name, kitchen porters rarely carry things. They mostly spend their lives up to their elbows in hot water washing up the pots and pans. We had two of them at the Hay Net. At least, that was the plan. But all too often a kitchen porter would be there one minute and gone the next. No explanation, no good-bye, just gone, never to return. The current incumbents of the posts included a man in his fifties whose father had come to England from Poland in 1940 to fight with the RAF against the Nazis. He had unpronounceable Polish names, with lots of ps and zs, but he spoke with a broad Essex accent, and was always “tinking.” “I tink I’ll go hame na,” he’d say. Or, “I tink I’ll ’ave a cap o’ tea.” He’d been with us for nearly a year, much longer than the norm, but he mostly kept himself to himself and communicated rarely with the other staff.
The other porter was called Jacek (pronounced Ya-check), and he was now in his fourth week and seemingly not very good at scrubbing the frying pans. He was more typical of those now sent to us by the local job center, in his mid to late twenties, and from one of the newer member countries of the European Union. He knew very little English, but he did manage to ask for my help sending money every week to his wife and baby daughter, who were still in the homeland. He seemed quite happy with life, always smiling and singing to himself, and he had been a positive influence on kitchen morale over the previous week. Now he stood in front of Carl and bowed his head, as if asking for forgiveness. Jacek nodded a lot, and I wondered how much of Carl’s tirade he was actually understanding. I was certain that he was not appreciating the sarcasm. I felt quite sorry for him, so far from home, in a strange environment and separated from his family.
I caught Carl’s attention. That’s enough, I mouthed to him. Jacek was hardworking, and I didn’t really want to lose him at the moment, not least because the current pair appeared to get on quite well together and neither of them was a heavy drinker, generally the bane of all kitchen porters.
Carl stopped almost in midsentence and dismissed the miscreant with a brief wave of his hand. Jacek passed me on the way back to his duties at the scullery sinks, and I smiled at him. He winked at me and smiled back. There was more to this kitchen porter, I thought, than meets the eye.
SATURDAY NIGHT HAD the feel of the Hay Net back in business. Sure, we were only serving at about two-thirds capacity, but the bar and the dining room were humming with excitement, and the horrors of the previous week were forgotten, albeit temporarily.
George and Emma Kealy and their two guests arrived promptly at eight-thirty, sat at their usual table and seemed to enjoy themselves, though quietly. Nothing was mentioned about my discussion with George at the funeral, but, as they were leaving, Emma turned to me and said, “See you next week, then, as usual.”
“For six?” I asked.
“Book for six,” she said. “I’ll let you know on Friday.”
“Fine,” I said, smiling at her.
“Have you found out yet what made everyone ill last week?” she asked. George looked horrified that his wife had been so tactless as to mention it.
“Not quite,” I said. “It appears that the dinner may have been contaminated.”
“What with?” asked Emma.
“I’m not quite sure yet,” I said. I wondered if it was simply embarrassment that was preventing me from mentioning anything about undercooked kidney beans. “I’m still trying to work out how something was put into the food.”
“You are surely not saying it was done on purpose,” she said.
“That is my inescapable conclusion,” I said.
“Sounds a bit fanciful to me,” said George.
“Maybe to you,” I said, “but what else can I think? Just suppose, George, you had a horse that ran like the wind on the gallops and then was more like a cart horse when you sent it out to run in a race, and it subsequently tested positive for dope. If you absolutely knew you hadn’t personally given it any substance to slow it down, then you would conclude that someone else must have done so. The same here. I absolutely know I didn’t put anything in that dinner to make people ill, but tests have shown that there was a food-poisoning agent present. So someone else must have put it there. And that, I believe, only could have been done on purpose. And, I can assure you, I intend to find out who was responsible.”
I thought that I probably shouldn’t be telling them quite so much, but they were supporting me when others were deserting, so maybe I owed them.
“Well, it did us a big favor anyway,” said Emma.
“How so?” I asked.
“We were invited to that lunch where the bomb went off,” she said. “We didn’t go only because we had both had such a bad night. How lucky was that! Although, I must admit, on the Saturday morning I was bloody angry with you.” She poked me in the chest with her finger. “I had been so looking forward to that day at the Guineas. Anyway, it turned out to be a blessing in the end.” She smiled at me. “So I forgive you.”
I smiled back and put a hand on her arm. “That’s all right, then,” I said. I always responded positively when flirted with by female customers who were old enough to be my mother. It was good for business.
“Come on, Emma,” said George impatiently, “we must go. Peter and Tanya are waiting.” He waved his hand towards their guests, who were standing patiently by the front door.
“All right, George,” she replied, irritated. “I’m coming.” She stretched up her five-foot-three frame to my six feet for a kiss, and, leaning forward, I duly obliged. “Night-night,” she said. “It’s been a lovely evening.”
“Thank you for coming,” I said, meaning it.
“And you can poison us anytime you like if it saves our lives.” She smiled.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to think of an appropriate response.
George was hopping from one foot to the other. “Come on, my darling,” he said with exasperation. Emma complied with a sigh. I watched through the window as the four of them got into and drove away in a new, top-of-the-line Mercedes.
That made three people that I now knew of who should have been in the bombed box but weren’t because they had been made ill by the dinner. Poor old Neil Jennings had wished he had been there with Elizabeth, but the Kealys certainly didn’t. They were perversely grateful for having been poisoned. Perhaps this particular dark cloud had a silver lining after all.
THE FEWER NUMBER in the restaurant had tended to make the service somewhat quicker than usual, and the last few diners departed just before eleven. On some Saturday nights, we could be still pouring ports and brandies after midnight, and, once or twice, it had been after one in the morning before I had cajoled the stragglers out through the front door and into the night.
I sat at my desk in the office and silently hoped that the worst was over. If I could nip the lawsuit in the bud, and plead ignorance and forgiveness over the poison kidney beans, then maybe normality would return to the Hay Net, at least for a few months, until I was ready to announce a move to the big city. How wrong I could be.
I looked at my watch. Eleven-fifteen. Time to go home, I thought. A nice early night for a change.