Sweet Home

The six-inch gash in the sofa’s vinyl has been done with a blade, and whoever was responsible dug a hand into the foam to pull out a sizeable hunk as a souvenir. Now, no matter how carefully the sofa’s taped up, it’s going to look like it’s been in the wars. Who was sitting at that spot today—table four, the low one, by the window? There were those young guys fresh out of the barber’s who’d ended up wrestling with each other in a bout of laddish high spirits but unfair to judge because it could have been anybody.

The church is not sure whether to retain the coffee shop, which is run in collaboration with a mental health charity to provide a supportive workplace for those who need it. Good, but there are so many other worthy projects which could offer assistance to a greater number of people. This place loses too much money. Even members of the congregation, while considering the cafe as a generally worthwhile enterprise, tend not to frequent it. The older churchgoers prefer a little more ease and comfort, and the younger ones a venue near the church where in the evenings singer-songwriters, often pretty ones playing the keyboards or on occasion the ukulele, sing songs that could be about Jesus or their boyfriend.

The coffee shop is called Jesters. The pictures on the old menus were of a medieval jester, but when Andy got the new menus done, the graphics studio showed him a picture of a joker and asked if that would do instead. Sure, Andy had said, because it looked more or less the same. When the menus came back from the printers they featured the joker, but in addition the liberty had been taken of incorporating other playing cards into the design. Above sweet treats there was the queen of hearts and over breakfast there was the king of diamonds.

A member of the church who happened to call in was appalled. The new menus, he pointed out, were highly inappropriate: how could Andy have thought them acceptable when the Bible was so very, very against games of chance? Did Andy not know his Bible? Andy had said that it was just a menu, nobody was actually playing any card games in the place, but the church representative was adamant that the menus should not be used. To get them redone would have been both expensive and a hassle, so Andy had gone to Shop Kwik for a few black markers and made everyone colour in the offending images. Rebekah and Jake had messed about, swiping each other, tagging each other on the face with the pens. Rosaleen had coloured in with total precision. JD watched them do it. He said that the outlines, especially the joker and the jack now looked positively satanic. And he was right. The silhouettes did hold a slouching menace.

Andy has no doubt that the people he worked with over the years in other cafes and restaurants had their difficulties and problems too, but they just weren’t made official in the way that they are in this place. In this place they keep it simple—soup, scones, toasties, baked potatoes, wraps, cakes—and no one is required to display culinary flair. When he first started, Andy saw that Rosaleen always went around with damp cuffs because she wore a sweatshirt under the Jesters polo shirt. Roll those sleeves up there Rosaleen would you? he had said. You’re getting them soaking there. And when she had slowly rolled them up Andy realised, oh. Maybe roll them down again. Rebekah’s polo shirt is tied in a big knot at the back so that it’s stretched tight across her chest. It certainly improves the fit but it seems a bit unnecessary. Andy doesn’t want to say anything about it though.

Come four o’clock it isn’t likely that there will be too many more customers.

Oh don’t worry about him, Jake, says Rosaleen. He’s still stuck back in the eighties.

Now don’t you be going turning that off, Jake, says Rosaleen. Just you keep it on if you like it.

I might be stuck in the eighties, says JD, but with that haircut of yours, Rosaleen, you look like you were there at the birth of rock and roll. Oh look, it’s Bill Haley with his Comets. Oh no, hold on, it’s actually Rosaleen McCann.

I don’t even like Avicii, says Jake. Turn it off if you want cos I don’t care.

Andy calls Rebekah over to ask her to bring in the geraniums that sit outside in wooden boxes, and the tables and chairs for the smokers.

Me do it? Rebekah says. Seriously? I actually find those things really difficult to move, Andy.

Not everybody’s a big bloke like you, Rosaleen. Not everybody’s a big bloke who can lug things around.

JD has started wiping everything down. Give it another five minutes, Andy says, and then turn the sign around. Only tables five and six are still occupied and their people are bound to leave soon. Rosaleen takes in the geraniums, the tables and chairs, and also the Jesters sign. Keep a quick eye on things while I nip down the road would you, Rosaleen? Andy says. He wants to buy some tape and get that sofa sorted before the end of the day because things can fall apart so quickly.

Andy got the job at Jesters through the church. In those early days he was there almost every other night at one thing or another, discussions and seminars, workshops and praise nights. That was when he was still full of the newfangledness of it all. One evening at a meeting someone from the church had mentioned that they were looking for a person to work in their cafe in a supervisory capacity. Well he had nothing on at the moment. Would he be interested in doing something like that? Yes, but had he any experience? They needed someone who knew what they were doing. The upmarket Lebanese where Andy had been working, Byblos Nights, had just closed down. People in Belfast, it seemed, needed Byblos nights as much as people in Byblos needed Belfast nights. It wasn’t long before he found himself sitting in the office of the charity, where he was required to have a short, informal interview.

On his way back to the cafe Andy sees the door open as a young guy and girl leave. They are both laughing and they stop to look through the window of the cafe before moving off up the road. And then out dashes Rebekah.

Andy, Rosaleen says, would you come here a minute because I think you need to speak to these ladies here.

One of the women is sipping a glass of water while the other looks on, solicitous. Well, the woman says, you come to a place like this and that’s not a sight that you expect to see. You think a place like this is going to be one thing and it turns out to be something else.

You think, her friend says, you think that you’re doing your bit by coming to a place like this. Maybe you shouldn’t but you do. It’s not like there’s not loads of other places on the road that you couldn’t go to. Place is coming down with coffee shops.

There’s been a problem all right. People! She flutters her hand. People! It’s not what I bargain on seeing when I go out to a cafe. And certainly not a religious place like this is meant to be. This is meant to be a religious place isn’t it?

Just as we’re about to leave, she says, I thought I’ll go to the toilet sure before we go and when I open the door what is it you think I see? Do you know what I see? Two people in your toilet.

No, says Andy. Really? In there? He looks in the direction of the only toilet in the place: unisex, cramped, the tiny washbasin that gets hit by the door, the gooey soap and that toilet brush that still has the barcode on it. Logistically difficult enough, but maybe those two that he saw leaving managed it.

Her friend says, They’re doing that and then they’re touching stuff like the sausage rolls. You know, they’re going out and working with the food.

Andy turns around to look at the counter where JD and Rosaleen are standing watching.

They didn’t even lock the door, says her friend. Imagine not even locking the door. You’d lock the door if you were even just going to the toilet.

They didn’t even see me standing there, says the woman. They were both so involved in it.

This, it is clear, could make the papers: a solemn-faced photo of this woman with her hair just done, sitting in the safety of her living room, nursing a cup of tea that has been made in the non-sexual province of her own kitchen. And it would herald the end of the place.

This shouldn’t have happened, Andy says. A shock, big time, for you and all I can say is that I am really sorry. He pauses. But what I am asking you, and this is me really asking you a big favour I know that, but could you just keep this to yourself? The people involved, they will be totally dealt with, trust me, this won’t happen again, but could you just let this stay between ourselves?

Sure it’s not like the people working here are right in the head, her friend says. Wouldn’t that be the case?

He gives them both loyalty cards and stamps them seven times. That means that next time our coffees are free! the friend points out. And he gives them the first slices of the new pavlova to take away. I just love getting the first slice, the friend says. Do you not just love getting the first slice?

When they’re gone Andy finds Jake out the back of the cafe, smoking a cigarette. I can’t believe this situation, says Andy. It’s outrageous. It’s a total disgrace. I mean, what were you thinking of?

Could you not have waited till the end of the day? Would it have been beyond you to get a room somewhere? Could you even have done it out in the alley?

Well that’s easy to say, isn’t it? And you’re only sorry because you got caught. I see your partner in crime didn’t hang around too long.

I hope you realise that this is actually a pretty big deal, Jake. It’s not good.

Andy had met Jake’s foster parents once. Grinning faces in a dirty old estate car, three other kids and two dogs in the back.

They sanitise the surfaces. They steep the cups in the tannin solution. Andy rings off the till, Xs and Zs it, checks the takings with the balance and sets up a new float, puts the money in the safe. The takings, such as they are. He lodges the invoices and Jake cleans the toilet. JD mops the floor but he stops to lift up the duct tape Andy has left sitting on one of the tables. Here, he says, what do you wrap a hamster in, so that it doesn’t explode when you shag it?

Rosaleen had made potato salad a couple of days ago. There is a vat of it. She looks at the use until date.

JD shares, with an assortment of people, a once grand and elegant house on the other side of town, long subdivided into little cold rooms.

The religious experience which had brought Andy to the church and then the cafe had happened on the second night of his brother’s stag. The first night had involved dry ice shots which had made him puke luminous bile. On the second, although she was meant to be the highlight, he hadn’t enjoyed the stripper. Andy had seen her sitting in the bar earlier on, talking to somebody, sad line of a mouth, eating crisps. Later on, when she’d appeared in the back room, he could see in the white light the indentations on her legs where her socks had been. The whole place was clapping and whooping, but he had gone back to the hotel room with the tiny kettle and the UHT stix in an old ashtray.

He lay on the bed watching the telly for a while. Some of the buttons were missing on the remote. Andy had looked in the embossed folder of services available in the hotel and saw that someone had drawn a dick on the writing paper. Who was ever going to write a letter from this place anyway? Might do for a suicide note, he supposed. Someone had also drawn three swastikas in the bottom left hand corner. The folder said that the hotel had been a family concern for twenty-five years. Andy had looked in the bedside drawer and seen a tube of toothpaste and a sock with a few condoms stuffed inside it. Someone had been feeling optimistic about the trip. And there was a small Gideon’s Bible that was even more plastic than the hotel menu of services. The paper was almost translucent and the print miniscule. He had to peer to see it. Rocky Raccoon, he thought. Andy opened a couple of random pages and tried to remember what happened to Rocky Raccoon, did he shoot somebody or did someone shoot him, and he didn’t know if he’d been reading for two minutes or two hours because time seemed to stretch and bend and collapse and fleeting things that he had never been able to articulate before started to take form in a way more substantial than words. When he looked at the ceiling of the shabby room, the damp patch over in the corner and the crack around the lighting surround, and the repeated crescent stains where somebody had bounced a dirty ball on the ceiling the fragility of it all was overwhelming and the beauty too, because there was Marty’s sweatshirt lying in illuminated folds like a sleeve from one of those old paintings, and there were the towels, brilliant white on the floor: centuries of people had cleaned away the dirt from sheets and towels, pummelling at the stains and the grime, rinsing it all away, the water circling down the drain, and endless lines of washing, high in the sky, billowing in a hard wind.

When everyone else has left and the cafe is silent, Andy gets out the admin folder with the various protocols relating to misconduct; it is clear that the correct thing to do is contact someone from the charity and someone from the church. But he closes the file and puts it back again. He stays late in the place. A couple of people think it’s still open and try the door. Could they not have come during the day when they actually needed the business? We thought it was maybe BYO in the evening mate, they say.

There’s been a few problems with the lights, the way they flicker at times and although he’s no expert in electrics Andy stands on one of the tables to take a look. The place could look better. Before being Jesters it was Café Society, and before that it was Olive’s. Olive, now an agent for industrial fridges, had once come in; she had expressed surprise that the décor was still the same. And I don’t remember it being this small, she kept saying. They’d never met anyone from Café Society, but regularly there were debt collection letters from places in Bolton. Andy lifts everything out of the fridge to clean it and then moves on to the grill. The floor has already been mopped by JD, but Andy does it again. They got the five star sticker on the door when Environment Health came. Food Hygiene and Safety: Very Good. Structural Compliance: Good. Confidence in Management: High. He’d been very happy about it. Andy cuts the duct tape carefully and smoothes it on the sofa; in this light it is hard to discriminate between the black tape and the brown sofa but anyway, he moves a cushion on top of it. It’ll hold up for a while. The man from the church had been right, he didn’t know his Bible, he didn’t know the names of all the books and the order they came in, he didn’t know what happened in all of the stories, he didn’t know what Jesus said next. But trying to be decent, that’s it, and what more is there to say really? What more is there to know? Decent way of being. On the way home from the stag, Marty had asked him where he’d got to the night before. Big grumpy face on ye, nothing for it but to slip you a pill—but then didn’t you just clear off? But Marty, he thought, had been only joking about that. He had been. He gives the coffee machine another polish.

Rosaleen is already waiting for him as usual in the morning, leaning against the shutters, the bread order and the containers of milk at her feet. Morning Andy, she says, blowing white air. Cold one, she says. Let’s get that heat on quick, he says. Inside he turns on the lights, the dishwasher, the cooker and the oven, the grill and the hot plate, the bain-marie and the gantry lights. He checks the phone; there’s a muffled message from Rebekah. She’s not well and won’t be in today. Then there’s the hot water boiler, the coffee machine and the radio. Andy cleans the food probe again, files the dockets from the deliveries in the in tray. He puts the food hygiene sheets in the right place. Then JD arrives. Christ, it’s cold out there, he says. I’ve been freezing my balls off for twenty minutes waiting for that bus.

Rosaleen has started making the vegetable soup. Maybe don’t overdo the salt in that, Andy says.

Well, I didn’t really think so to be honest, Andy says. But a couple of people did say they thought it was salty.

Maybe what we should be using is sea salt, Rosaleen says. It’s meant to be a gentler taste.

Look, says JD. He’s just saying to you, don’t be putting in so much of the fucking salt. That’s all. Sea salt or whatever kind of salt, don’t put in so much of it. And don’t be taking things thick.

Oh look who it is, the last of the red hot lovers, says JD. I was just thinking last night, you know the way there’s the mile-high club, is there an equivalent for a coffee shop?

Jake, when you’re ready, he says, would you mix up the scones this morning? All the stuff’s already sitting out for you.

Andy always buys a couple of papers to put in the rack, but the workers only look at the front page so they don’t get messed up. Pointless, because even after the first couple of people reading them there’s buttery thumb smears in the corners, pastry flakes in the folds. Sometimes people take the papers with them, as a free gift. If anything was said to them it would be, jeez, you’ve got your priorities right, making all that fuss over a tatty old paper?

Rebekah decided not to turn up today? Rosaleen says. Her ladyship decided not to face the world today?

Come on, son, JD says. So fucking what. There was a mate of mine, okay we’re going back a few years here, but there was a mate of mine had sex in a concentration camp.

Well what he said was, was that—wait a minute here, hold on till I get this right—was that it was an affirmation of life in a place of death.

Well, mate, says JD, don’t worry about it, you had sex in a toilet in a cafe, not Belsen.

Well we’ll need to talk about it later on, says Andy. It’s not Belsen, but it is a workplace. What I need you to do after the scone mix is sort out that cutlery, that okay? And then I need you to go to the bank for a few coins.

Andy wonders about the effectiveness of the extractor fan. He’ll have a look at it himself because getting somebody out is bound to be expensive. A couple of people come in for breakfast, regulars. The woman always wants a coffee with a jug of warm milk so that she can pour it in herself. Andy looks at the toilet door. There used to be a sign, for customers only, because people would come in off the street to use the toilet. But the sign kept falling off the door. You would say that it’s for customers only, did you not see the sign, and they would say, what sign?—and then you would see it lying on the floor.

Mid-morning a man comes in wearing a suit and a shirt with the top button undone, no tie. He sits at the desk and gets out some plastic wallets and a laptop. When Andy goes over, the man greets him warmly. Andy! he says. How’s it going?

Andy looks at his name badge which doesn’t pin properly so it’s always on the diagonal. Sometimes people do this: they see the name and use it repeatedly for a laugh. You have any red sauce there, Andy? Thanks, Andy. Wanna take that plate away, Andy? What time you close, Andy? Some people get a lot of fun out of doing that. JD refuses to wear the badge.

Andy looks at the man and then what’s on the desk. Looks at the heading on the paper that is sitting on the table, the heading in letters all friendly and small case. He’s from the charity. How could he have forgotten about today? It’s circled on the calendar in an orange loop. He can visualise it. The pen didn’t work at first so there’s a further orange scribble next to it.

Andy says that that’s right, he doesn’t think they have met before. When it was Rosaleen’s six-month review a woman came.

Yes, Aidan says. That would have been Carole. I’m her line manager. I’m Deputy Head of Services.

Right, he says. No biggie, Andy, but it would have been good if you’d let me know that. This is difficult to do without Rebekah actually here.

No, Andy, it’s fine. No hassle whatsoever, but I think we’d be better just working on through. Get down to business.

Aidan opens the laptop and takes out a couple of documents from a wallet. Alright, he says, here we are. Rebekah. General impression?

Now here’s when we’re going to look at Rebekah’s organisational abilities. How would you rate them?

She’s alright. It’s not like she has to, you know, organise a lot of stuff here.

I see from the submitted data that we have here that Rebekah is actually very well qualified. Quite a few exams.

Now how is her social interaction with both the public and with other members of the team? says Aidan. Pretty good?

Andy glances at the toilet door. Fine, he says. She’s alright. Everybody has their moments, in any workplace.

There’s obviously a range of personalities here. Different people, different—

Sure, says Aidan. I maybe should have made it clear to you earlier on Andy, that in terms of this review, we are strictly interested in your perception, and our client’s perception, although she’s not actually here of course, of the satisfactory nature or otherwise of the working environment, for the client. Unless you are a clinician, which with the very greatest of respect I don’t believe you are, unless you are a mental health practitioner it would be inappropriate for us to enter into that kind of discourse.

Andy thinks of big flowers on a tired carpet bursting into bloom and running his hand over red plastic, poetry held in a damp stain on a ceiling.

Alright, Andy. So in general terms you’ve had no problems whatsoever with Rebekah?

There are thirty-eight bullet-pointed misdemeanours listed under gross misconduct in the handbook but this misdemeanour is not there because no one thought to include it. It couldn’t be downgraded to just major because major includes things like ‘physical horseplay when working’ and ‘wilful wastage of time’.

No, Andy says, all going more or less fine. As you’d expect. Same goes for JD and Jake and Rosaleen.

In the absence of Rebekah then, Aidan says, that is us almost done. It normally takes longer because there should be a dialogue, involving the client. What we are aiming for is—he pauses—is a dialectic.

The other woman never got passionate and intense about a dialectic. The other woman, Andy remembers, wanted to know if there was somewhere on the road where you could get alterations done.

Andy looks around at Rosaleen down on her hands and knees scrubbing at a spot on the floor, and the menu propped up against the window with its coloured-in playing cards.

Well all that remains, Aidan says, is for you to sign this off. I need your signature just there, and then there. Just to verify everything. That’s it. And sign that one too. Good.

And then he puts away the laptop and the papers. As he’s going out he asks Andy, You ever been to Slim’s Kitchen? No? Great place Slim’s Kitchen. Andy watches Aidan head up the road until he cannot see him anymore.

Tutti! a woman shouts. Tutti Frutti! A large dog passes by, trailing its lead. Tutti Frutti! the woman shouts again, but the dog pays no heed. Andy attempts to catch the lead but it slips through his fingers. He follows the dog. It’s always just a couple of feet in front of him until outside Shop Kwik it stops and begins gyring about, sending the lead flailing. A gang of young fellas now surround it, laughing. Get it! It’s going mental! Get its lead, get it, here, I got it! but then the dog breaks loose again and the boys chase after it while the woman is still way down the road, calling its name in vain.

Andy goes into Shop Kwik. He sees the bank of sweets in front of him, the garden ornaments to one side, scales and sandwich makers to the left. There’s the polyphonic sound of a row of animatronic fish, flexing as they sing. Somebody’s gone down the aisle pressing all of the buttons. There’s a spangled sign saying that raspberry cava (non-alcoholic) is on offer. He lifts a bottle. There’s a range of cakes, discounted, that the label says have been baked in a country kitchen. He’ll buy one, a Battenberg cake.

Always does, says Andy. Everybody goes to that one because they closed the other two.

He probably called in somewhere for a drink on the way, didn’t you? says JD. You ever had Spirytus, it’s 95% proof.

Thought that was the name of a leisure centre, says Rosaleen. I finished off doing your scones by the way, Jake.

So her ladyship’s never graced us today, says Rosaleen. Wonder if she’s feeling any better.

They are not busy at lunchtime. The food sits under the gantry lights crisping, drying out. JD goes around with the jug of coffee, asking people if they would like a top-up, a tea towel studiously draped over his arm. He’s having a laugh. Rosaleen’s soup remains mostly still in the pot. Some guys working on the site around the corner come in looking for a fry but they want to leave when they’re told that the cafe doesn’t do fries. There’s soup, Rosaleen says. Would you like a bowl of soup?

JD says when he was married that they used to have a roast chicken on a Sunday and then make soup with the carcass. It was always lovely.

Today it is Jake who brings in the flower boxes from outside and the tables and chairs which he stacks between the sofas by the window. He asks if it’s alright if he leaves a bit earlier today because he’s got a hospital appointment.

Oh yeah, so you did, Andy remembers. Well, you might as well head on then. We’ll do the clean down.

Seriously, Andy says, never worry. But anyway, Jake, you know you won’t be working here forever?

They turn the sign around. They sanitise the surfaces again. They steep the cups in the tannin solution. Andy rings off the till, Xs it and Zs it, checks the takings with the balance and sets up a new float, puts the money in the safe. The takings, such as they are. He lodges the invoices while JD mops the floor. JD does a soft shoe shuffle with his dance partner mop as he croons some tune. Oh, for God’s sake, shut up would you? says Rosaleen. She’s checking the temperatures of the fridge and freezer, the chill cabinet, noting them down.

They’re doing the final tidy when JD says that he’s got something he wants to show to Andy. Check this, he says, and I don’t think I’m wrong when I say you are not going to like it. Here, come over here, don’t be letting Rosaleen see this. He has set down his phone and on the screen is the Jesters Cafe page. There is a one star review by Malcolm McCourt, who has a profile pic of a woman on a bike in a bikini.

Oh so what, says Andy. People have given us bad reviews before. Doesn’t matter.

If u know wats good for u don’t come to this place unless you like your food cooked by a fat lezzer and an alkie. But, more importantly if u do not mind fucking in the bogs no mate I am not joking happened just now and we were there, welcome to da freakzone.

But it has been shared six times already. Someone has offered the comment, OMG, ha ha.

Well, they should get their facts right, says JD. I haven’t really been an alkie since 2009.

Nobody’ll pay any heed, says Andy. But there is every chance that the church will find out about this. It will be the excuse they need. They’ll see where he signed Aidan’s sheet to say that the girl who had sex in the toilet is a good worker in all respects.

Oh nothing, Andy says. I’m just saying, come on and sit down for a minute or two, that’s all.

He gets out the non-alcoholic cava and the Battenberg cake, puts them in the middle of the table.

Yes, says Rosaleen. Her hand is up the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Yes, come on and sit down JD. Take yourself a seat.

But I’ll tell you what, do you not think we can do better than this? I think we can, says Rosaleen. She goes through to the back and brings out a tablecloth—only paper but white—and lays it over the long table, smoothes it down.

Sure use those other ones, says JD, the ones for the ice-cream sundaes. When we used to do the ice-cream sundaes. Those shrinky dink glasses.

Andy cuts the cake, reveals the pink and yellow motley of the Battenberg, and they all take a slice.

Bit dry, says JD. If it wasn’t for the marzipan, you’d think you were eating bread.

See that joke I told you the other day, says JD, I got it wrong. You remember that joke? Yeah? I said the punchline was duct tape. But it should have been why do you wrap— why do you wrap a hamster in duct tape? Answer: so it doesn’t explode when you—

Yes, JD, alright, says Rosaleen. I think we can work it out. Don’t think it’s any funnier that way around.

Outside the light is starting to wane. It was cold this morning but it will be even more pitiless now.

Look, says Andy, still a bit left in this bottle. And he shares the dregs between the three sundae glasses, which they clink.

Last Supper