“Some of us are trying to sleep!” yelled Larrie when my alarm went off the next morning. “I’ve got six hours’ study to do today.”
Well, you shouldn’t have come home from Beth’s after midnight, I thought, but I turned the radio off. It was punishment enough having to be up early on a Saturday morning for work without Mum telling me off for disturbing Larrie’s precious sleep.
Mum was waiting for me downstairs, dressed in her latest trendy exercise outfit. She says she does yoga every Saturday morning to keep her body strong and flexible, but I suspect it’s also because she looks way better in lycra than most of the mums in Kingston. She gave herself a final once-over in the hall mirror before we left.
On the short drive to the village we saw plenty of familiar local faces heading out for breakfast or coming back from the newsagency with the Saturday papers. When we pulled up outside Say Cheese, Dylan waved from inside the shop.
“Say hi for me,” said Mum. “And tell Jay to lay off the triple-cream brie before he comes in for his cholesterol test next week.”
Jay and Dylan have owned Kingston’s specialty cheese shop for as long as I can remember. Since Jay’s heart attack last year he’s supposed to take it easy, so Dylan gave him an ultimatum: either they sell the business and retire to the country or they hire someone to help out with the Saturday morning rush and other busy times.
I started working for them last summer when Larrie was away at a camp for precocious overachievers youth leaders. I was bored and broke and desperate to get out of the house, and it seemed fitting that I should work in a shop that specialises in Larrie’s kryptonite. It’s not exactly glamorous, but I get to eat all the cheese I want, and since Larrie’s had the whole household walking on eggshells it’s been a relief to spend time in a place where she’s not the centre of attention.
Saturday mornings are pretty busy at Say Cheese. We get a steady stream of people dropping in after breakfast at Petite Cafe or on their way to brunch at Armando’s. They stop by to pick up cheese platters for their dinner parties, or the perfect complement to the artisanal sourdough from Bliss Bakery next door.
“Thank God you’re here,” said Dylan when I opened the door. It’s his standard greeting, even though the “crises” he needs me to help with are usually minor. I think he mainly says it to make me feel needed. It works. “Jay had a bad night so it’s just the two of us till he’s caught up on a bit of sleep. Can you open the shop while I take Doodoo for a walk?”
Doodoo is Jay and Dylan’s ancient Maltese terrier cross (crossed with a rat, if you ask me, but I’d never say that to Jay). She and Jay share many of the same medical conditions, including high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. The three of them live in the flat above the shop.
After Dylan and Doodoo left, I checked that the refrigerated display cabinet was fully stocked and correctly labelled, and gave the shelves of crackers, quince paste and other cheese accompaniments a tidy. Before long the bell on the door tinkled with the arrival of our first customer.
A big downside of working in Kingston: everyone knows everyone. Aside from Maz, most kids at Whitlam have lived around here all our lives. Our parents bought their houses twenty-odd years ago, when young couples who couldn’t afford a big house on a big block of land started buying Kingston’s run-down terraces on the cheap and renovating them themselves. Once all these nice, middle-class couples were living in Kingston they needed places to shop and eat out and get their hair done, so Kingston Shopping Village was born. It’s almost impossible for me to have a day at work when I don’t see at least one person who’s known me all my life.
Mrs Green came in first thing to get her weekly ration of edam, which she insisted be cut in precisely three-millimetre-thick slices. I concentrated on keeping my fingers away from the whirring steel blade of the slicer while she chatted at me about her daughter. At school, Tracy is known for getting out of it as soon as someone cracks the seal on a bottle; she has a “no tell” policy, which means no one’s allowed to tell her about anything she did that she can’t remember for herself. Tracy must have been a very different girl at home, because Mrs Green bragged on and on about her volunteer work with Kingston Meals on Wheels until I handed over her perfectly sliced cheese in one of Say Cheese’s stylish brown paper bags.
“Say hello to your mum for me,” she called on her way out. “Tell her that cream cleared my rash right up.” Another downside of working in Kingston: everyone knows Mum.
Jay still looked pretty knackered when he came down a couple of hours later.
“Why don’t you take the day off?” suggested Dylan.
“And leave you two to your own devices? Who knows what’d be waiting for me when I come down tomorrow.”
Dylan pretended to be insulted for about two seconds before winking at me and agreeing.
I like Jay and Dylan equally, but Dylan’s definitely the more easygoing boss. He’s about ten years younger than Jay and a lot less serious. Jay says it’s because he’s an eldest child and had to be responsible for his younger brothers and sisters from an early age. But Dylan once told me that Jay had a pretty rough time growing up and it’d taken some of the fun out of him.
“Besides,” said Jay, “Al still has to pass this week’s test. Where’s the blindfold?”
When I first started at Say Cheese, I didn’t know much about what I was selling, since Larrie’s condition meant we never had it at home. Jay began teaching me about the different cheeses in the shop in my first week, making me taste an increasingly smelly selection of soft cheeses until I’d worked up to a blue vein that was so strong it could have walked out the door on its own.
To further my education, Jay had started giving me blindfolded taste tests of the new cheeses that came in. First, he’d pass a plate with the cheese on it under my nose for me to sniff, then he’d pop a small piece in my mouth. Not being able to see the colour and texture of the cheese meant I had to rely on my senses of smell and taste. Unlike other odours that hit my nose like a full-frontal assault, I found I could detect subtle differences between the cheeses: a little straw aroma here, a touch of ash from a wood fire there. So far I’d correctly identified fifteen out of twenty-five, and come close on another six.
“What do you think?” asked Jay.
I swirled the cheese around my mouth with my tongue, considering its flavours. “It’s definitely a parmesan. And judging by the amount of crystallisation, it’s been aged for at least two years. It’s too full-on to be a Grana Padano, so I reckon it must be a Reggiano.”
“Genius!” said Dylan, pulling off the blindfold so I could see the official Parmagiano-Reggiano seal stamped on the side of the large wheel of cheese on the chopping block.
I smiled to myself. If Cheese Appreciation was on the Whitlam curriculum, I would’ve blown Larrie out of the water.
The bell on the door tinkled and Jay and Dylan snapped back into serious work mode, relaxing again when they saw it was just Simon.
“Oh, hi, Al,” Simon said, as if he was surprised to see me, even though he’s come into Say Cheese every Saturday since I started working there. (Without doubt the biggest downside to working in Kingston.)
“Can I help you?” I asked formally.
“Mum’s after something special for a souffle. I told her you’d know what to recommend.”
I thought for a moment. “It depends how strong she wants to go. Some people like a blue vein, but I think it can be a bit overwhelming in a souffle. What I’d recommend is Gruyère.”
I pulled out the block of cheese and cut a sliver for him to taste. Simon may have been running a close second to Larrie for the title of Bane of My Existence, but a customer was a customer. And, if I was being honest, I enjoyed knowing more than him about one subject.
“It’s Swiss,” I said as he chewed. “Known for its excellent melting properties. The flavour is strong, but it’s offset by a sweet nuttiness.”
“I couldn’t have sold it better myself,” said Jay, proudly, when Simon left with a large wedge of Gruyère two minutes later.
Al Miller knows her cheese.