Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

As if explaining everything, James said: “He doesn’t mean no soup, he means no soup spoons.”

Stephan Dance leaned across while the waiter opened Brendan’s bottle — the latest of a good number, at a guess. “Don’t quote me, laddie, but if that happened in my line of business there’d be shop managers walking around this patch with no hands.” To the waiter he said: “It’s that Guido who’s done the runner, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sair, Meester Stephan Dance, sair. He starts at Pizza Heaven tomorrow, sair. I tell him a hundert times, iss a pizza place, they don’ serve soup, what they want with soup spoons, take some coffee spoons, but no, he won’t listen, Meester Stephan Dance sair.”

“Whereas you yourself are a model of attentiveness?” barked Brendan Barton, coming out of a light doze.

“At all times, Meester Brendan Barton sair,” smirked the waiter.

“So to reiterate a previous and frequently asked question, where the fuck is my fucking duck?”

“Iss on iss way, Meester Brendan Barton.”

“Dowry,” said James to Alex, by way of further explanation of the soup-spoon theme.

“Bung,” expanded Stephan Dance.

“You’ve lost me, sorry,” said Alex, mystified. Mebbe not one for the lads after all, he didn’t have the first idea what they were rabbiting on about.

Brendan Barton, to claim Alex’s attention, lurched across Stephan Dance, thereby knocking over Dance’s bottle of Pellegrino and spilling most of it down his trousers. In anyone else, was Alex’s guess, the incident could well have led to a charge of grievous bodily harm, perhaps involving the serrated knife which Dance had instinctively grabbed. But the porn-shop king merely assumed a resigned expression and reached for a napkin. That Brendan Barton must be a good customer.

“Read my book, you ignorant Yorkshire tyke,” boomed Brendan across to Alex. “ Soho Nights , now sadly out of print. I in turn stole the story from Soho Days by Lieutenant Colonel Newnham Davies, who very probably made it up himself. Gastronomic critic of the old Pall Mall Gazette , known as the Dwarf of Blood.”

“What was he called that for?” asked Alex, in the interest of garnering research for the lads.

“Leave it, son,” advised Stephan Dance, leaning over and waving a cautionary knife. “He’ll tell you what he wants to tell you. What he don’t want to tell you, he won’t tell you. It’s how we are, is that right or isn’t it, James?”

“It’s right,” mumbled James obediently, in a cowed way. And Alex sensed, for the first time in this curious catchment area, menace. No one had done anything to him. No one had threatened him. But it was there, he now grasped, and rendered portable by the likes of the Pellegrino-sipping Stephan Dance.

“To answer your extremely boring question,” said Brendan Barton, “the Dwarf of Blood was, as you could have worked out in your own pinpoint head in ten seconds, a nom de plume or if I have to spell that out a pen name. Pen name !” he emphasised, with elephantine patience. “And the story he told was that in the very old days when all these little restaurants were owned by immigrant families from Italy and Greece or wherever, it was the done thing when you changed your job as a waiter or commis chef or whatever to take to your next place a dowry of cutlery or plates or cups and saucers or whatever you could get away with, am I losing you as an audience?”

“Not at all,” said Alex politely.

“Because you see they couldn’t afford to stock up on cutlery and crockery themselves. So the Dwarf of Blood having planted the tale, it became a what’s the word I’m looking for, tradition, custom, old Soho ritual, load of bollox, what the fuck is this supposed to be?”

The last segment of Brendan’s words was addressed to the cross-eyed waiter, who had placed in his approximate vicinity a side dish of admittedly shrivelled petits pois to accompany his main dish of duck à l’ orange. Brendan prodded the metal dish with a fork and reiterated: “I say, what is this green heap of shit, waitah?”

You would never get away with this in Leeds, not anywhere. The waiter, plainly containing himself, said in a strained voice: “Issa petits pois you ordaired, Meester Brendan Barton sair.”

Brendan flung down his fork with such force that a splash of green mush reached Stephan Dance’s right sleeve. Another capital offence in Alex’s view.

“These are not petits pois, you scoundrel, these are the pellets you shot the fucking duck with.”

Sodding hell fire, he was well out of order there. The cross-eyed waiter, lower lip trembling, stared at Stephan Dance in a hurt spaniel sort of way, in the belief that he was staring at Brendan Barton.

“Meester Brendan Barton sair, in thirty-five years I am at Baldini’s as a waiter, nevair have I been spoken to in such a way, if I may say so, sair.”

Brendan triumphantly thumped the table, causing some of the offending petits pois to jump out of their dish and roll about the tablecloth like the pellets he claimed they were. “You’ve worked in the same establishment for thirty-five years and you’re still a lousy waiter. I’m not fucking surprised, when you serve used ammunition as a vegetable!”

That was enough for the waiter. Crossed eyes brimming with tears, he stumbled off through a green baize door evidently leading down to the kitchen.

“You don’t think he’s taken offence, do you, Brendan?” murmured Stephan Dance, with mock concern.

“If he hasn’t, he’s even more insensitive than I thought,” snarled Brendan, swigging down a whole glass of wine in one gulp, with the result that for the next few moments the small restaurant reverberated with loud hiccoughs.

The green baize door swung open forcefully as, grim-faced, Mrs Powolny marched out to Brendan’s table. “I’m very sorry, Mr Barton, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr Dance, but good waiters are hard to find, I can’t have Mr Barton upsetting my staff every time he comes in, I’m very sorry but I don’t care who he is.”

“He’ll get over it, woman,” rumbled Brendan, fishing in his trouser pockets. He produced the familiar, to Alex, wad of twenty-pound notes and peeled one off. “Here, give him this and tell him if he can’t take a joke he shouldn’t have joined.”

Mrs Powolny declined the money. “Yes, and how many times have we heard you come out with that one, Mr Barton? But I’m afraid this time the joke’s on you. He’s gone. He’s walked out.”

“Oh, yes?” said Brendan affably. “Did he take the cutlery?”

Right, yeh yeh yeh, this was all very entertaining and Alex would have to remember that line about did he take the cutlery, but on the other hand he was starving hungry.

“Any chance of a steak and chips, luv?” he asked plaintively, as Mrs Powolny turned on her heel.

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re closing.”

“What about a doggy bag for the duck?” roared Brendan after her, but she was already barging through the green baize door.

“Come on, Brendan, let’s have it away on our toes to Mr Wong’s in Wardour Street,” persuaded Stephan Dance.

Allowing Dance to help him to his feet, Brendan Barton found himself still clutching his wad of twenty-pound notes. He transferred his gaze from the bundle of notes to Alex, at the same time trading in the glance for a glare.

“Oh, yes! Reminds me. That young bugger there owes me fifty pounds.”

Alex felt himself going white, but decided on a policy of silence.

“Talking to you, son,” prompted Stephan Dance politely.

“Don’t know what he’s on about,” mumbled Alex. He would be sweating in a minute. Oh, Christ, don’t let him sweat.