The Hotel Splendide was located in the snootiest part of Manchester’s city centre, not far from Kendal Milne’s upmarket store. A good taxi ride from Didsbury but well worth it, according to Dubois, not only because of its reputation for superb cuisine but also for its opulence and its luxury. He forgot to mention the prices.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing booking an expensive place like this,’ Laura said for the tenth time.
‘Fear not, Laura. It’s just a one-off before we go into economy mode. The storm before the lull, as it were.
‘Perhaps there’ll be a reduction now you’re a pensioner.’
‘If a restaurant offers special reductions for pensioners, it will probably mean smaller portions not lower prices.’
They were met by an obsequious maitre d’ in an ill-fitting tuxedo. Billy gave his name and told him he had a booking for seven thirty.
‘Ah yes, m’sieu. We have reserved your table. Meanwhile, you would perhaps like to wait in our little salle d’attente .’
He led them to what looked like a holding pen with a small bar where Billy ordered two dry sherries.
At the appointed time, the maitre d’ reappeared. ‘We have your table for two reserved till nine thirty,’ he said. Bon appetit!
)
‘I suppose at half past nine we’ll be chucked out on our ears,’ Billy whispered to Laura as they sat down.
The maitre d’ returned and gave them a menu about the size of a school blackboard and showed them to their table. They decided to splash out and order a la carte. The menu was in French and listed such strange things as: table de lievre, sauce poivrade; magret de canard quatre famous; canon d’agneau en croute, sauce orientale. What the heck was that all about? And why did they describe their courses with such pretentious phrases as ‘Une symphonie de . . .’ or ‘ Un melange de . . .’ A young family at the next table sat staring uncomprehendingly at the menu. ‘They’d be better off buying Big Macs in the Arndale Centre,’ Billy murmured to Laura.
The waiters stood around looking superior and bored as if it was beneath them to do such a menial thing as take an order for a meal. If they’re so superior, Billy thought, how come they’re doing the serving and we’re the ones being served? If they ever get round to it, that is.
For the best part of twenty minutes, they were completely ignored even though Billy made several frantic hand signals, even whirling his napkin over his head.
‘The snootier the restaurant, the more the waiters put you down,’ he muttered to Laura. ‘If they don’t come soon, there won’t be enough time to finish the meal.’
What with the appetizing smells coming from the kitchen and the sight of other 'diners guzzling, they began to feel hungry and his stomach started to rumble like an approaching storm. In desperation he stood up and waylaid a waiter hurrying by.
‘We’re ready to order now,’ he announced, holding the man by the coat tails.
It did the trick, for one of the waiters engaged in conversation with his colleagues detached himself from his companions and sauntered over to see if they’d like to order any of the food on offer. For hors d’oeuvres, Laura chose souffle
de Roquefort and Billy opted for mosaique de lapin, both with salade de cresson. Despite their study of O-level French, they weren’t exactly sure what they’d be getting but as long as it wasn’t in any way connected with frogs’ or snails’ intestines, they weren’t too worried. It turned out to be a sort of frothy whipped-up omelette for Laura and delicate slices of rabbit meat for him, both with watercress and served on gigantic charger plates.
‘Why are the menus in posh hotels always in French?’ Laura wondered.
‘So as to disguise what the grub really is and so they can charge eye-watering prices. The posher the restaurant, the more incomprehensible the menu.’
‘And why are the minuscule portions served on such big plates?’
‘So as to make them look like edible works of art by Cezanne and to give the impression they’re really special.’
For the main course, Laura selected raie meuniere avec petits pois while he went for the pave de boeuf grille avec pommes Dauphine. Laura’s meal turned out to be pan-roasted skate with green peas while his was grilled rump steak with mashed potatoes served in fancy patterns.
The wine waiter approached them and tried to sell them a 1976 white Bordeaux at £85 but though Billy was in a celebratory mood, it wasn’t that celebratory and they settled for a bottle of Chateau Saint Floran Blanc at £12.95, which he thought expensive enough.
The wine waiter brought the bottle, uncorked it and with due ceremony poured out a little for Billy to sample. As was expected of him, he swirled the wine around the glass, then sniffed it like a connoisseur.
‘Good,’ he declared. ‘It has good depth and a bright aromatic bouquet. We’ll take it. It is a bon vin blanc.’
The waiter corrected Billy’s accent.
‘The French word blanc , m’sieu, is not pronounced as blank
like that but should be said like this,’ he pontificated, giving the word a ringing nasal twang. The supercilious bastard, Billy said inwardly.
‘Thank you for putting me right,’ he replied, even though his hackles were rising. ‘I’ll try to remember it, professeur.’
Laura stepped in quickly to avoid a confrontation by changing the subject.
‘I wasn’t aware that you were so knowledgeable about wine,’ she said.
‘I’m not,’ Billy said, ‘I know nowt about it. But I do know something about the humbug often used to describe the stuff. I once read a book entitled How to Bluff Your Way in a Restaurant .’
The waiter returned with their wine and placed it in the wine cooler.
‘So, Billy,’ Laura said, as she sipped her Bordeaux, ‘what are you going to do with all the spare time you’ll have now?’
‘I thought I might help you in the kitchen.’
‘Can’t say that idea appeals to me very much, Billy. Some cynical lady said that she married her husband for better or worse, but not for lunch every day as well. I’m not used to you around the place during the day. Come to think of it, though, there are a hundred DIY jobs I could find for you, like putting up shelves, installing more electric sockets, decorating the spare bedroom.’
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Laura. But have no fear about me sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Things are going to be wonderful from now on. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. There are thousands of possibilities, so many things I could take up. The world is my oyster.’
‘Like for instance?’
‘Well, off the top of my head, I could cycle round the world, learn to speak fluent German, play the guitar to concert standard, read all the classics like War and Peace and Anna Karenina, climb the Matterhorn. The list is endless.’
‘Be serious. What would you really like to do?’
‘Quite a question, Laura. I’d like to spend my time pursuing some worthwhile activity that gives satisfaction and offers a sense of purpose.’
‘What about finishing that novel you were going to write? What was it called again?’
‘You mean Our Kid. I made lots of notes, even started the first chapter but found there’s an awful lot to writing a novel. People are always declaring how they have a wonderful idea for a novel but writing one is not as easy as they think. Maybe I’ll look at it again some time but right now I have one or two other ideas in mind.’
‘Sounds intriguing.’
They’d just about given up ever seeing any food when their main courses arrived and they became preoccupied tucking in.
‘Kmowing you, Billy,’ Laura said as she spooned her outrageously expensive fish onto her plate, ‘I’m sure you’ll find lots to occupy you. But it’s also important to keep yourself fit.’
‘You’re right, Laura. One thing I’m sure of is that I’m not going to get into the habit of watching daytime telly with those old black and white films featuring all the old stars, like Leslie Howard, Alastair Sim, and Margaret Rutherford. You find yourself saying, “He’s dead. He’s dead. Shes dead. All the ads are for things like Steradent, surgical stockings, walk-in baths, stair lifts with Dame Thora Hird whizzing up and down, and personal loans (Why not cripple yourself by consolidating all your little loans into one massive debt?). And then to cap it all, on comes Misery himself in the person of that Frank Windsor fellah with the melancholy face to ask if you’ve made your funeral arrangements yet and do you want to be buried and, if so, what kind of box, wood or degradable cardboard, or what about cremation? Then follow loads of boring quizzes and games like Countdown, which I hate cos I can’t do it.’
‘You can play tennis with your old school chums in the afternoons now they’ve also taken early retirement,’ she said brightly.‘Didn’t you call yourself the Smokers’ Club?’Anything to keep him out of the kitchen, she thought.
‘That’s right, Laura. The old Smokers’ Club at Damian College. So called as that’s how we became friends, puffing on our Park Drives in the toilets at break time. Funny thing is that none of us smoke nowadays but we’ve kept the name for old time’s sake. Getting together for a men’s doubles once a week is a good idea though they’re not all at liberty to play. Poor old Oily is still beavering away in the Central Library but I think Titch, Oscar and Nobby should be available. It’ll be great to have my old mates around for company. It was a miracle the way we all managed to get ourselves pensioned off early when the government went barmy making cuts right, left and centre.’
‘Titch, Oscar, Nobby and Oily! I always thought they were such peculiar names,’ she said as she cut into her fish. ‘Remind me again. How did they come by them?’
Billy chuckled as his memory went back to that first day as an eleven-year-old scholarship boy at Damian College. He could remember it as if it were yesterday when he and his pals had given each other nicknames. Norbert Nodder became Nobby; Oliver Hardy, Oily; Tony Wilde who’d fancied himself as an intellectual, Oscar; and Richard Smalley because of his name and small stature was accorded the sobriquet Titch. As for himself, sometimes he was called Hopalong Cassidy but the one most people favoured was Hoppy.
‘Amazing how the names have stuck all these years even now you’re retired,’ Laura remarked.
‘Apart from tennis, Laura, I’ve been thinking of joining a sports centre and maybe even buying a bicycle.’
‘No need to go over the top, Billy. You’re not exactly a young man, you know.’
‘Maybe not, but inside me there’s a twenty-one-year-old trying to get out.’
‘Then this young man’s in for a disappointment when he emerges and finds he’s got the body of an elderly gent.’
‘You wait till you see me after I’ve got myself fit. I’ll have to fight the ladies off,’ he said, slicing a piece of steak.‘Tomorrow, I’ll see if the others are up for a weekly game of tennis and then I’ll look into joining a gymnasium.’
‘One thing is sure,’ she said,‘we’ll have to start cutting down on expenses. You know what they say about retirement? “Twice as much husband on half as much money.” I hope we’re going to be all right financially.’
‘We should be OK, Laura,’ he replied. ‘For a start there’s just the two of us now the family’s flown the nest. We have my retirement lump sum of fifteen thousand pounds and a pension of nearly five hundred a month.’
‘We should be able to manage, though things will be tight. We still have big bills for gas, electricity, telephone and so on, as well as the mortgage hanging round our necks. Monthly standing orders alone swallow two hundred and fifty pounds. Then there’s housekeeping on top of that, say two hundred. That leaves very little for all the other expenses like clothes, running the car, etcetera.’
‘I know, I know, Laura. But not to worry because I have two cunning plans. The mortgage is five thousand pounds and we can pay that off from the lump sum. That’s one big expense gone.’
He paused to refill the wine glasses.
‘And the second cunning plan, Billy?’
‘I shall take on private pupils. That should bring in a little extra cash to help eke out the pension. At first, I thought of doing supply teaching as I believe its well paid nowadays but that’d simply be doing the same old job that I’ve been doing for forty years. No, I’m going to coach students.
‘Coach? English, I suppose.’
‘Not only English. Music as well. I studied piano with my old friend Denis Glynn for a considerable time and don’t forget that I once took singing lessons with your mother when I had polypi on the larynx. Why, I once sang a Mozart aria before an audience of two hundred women students in a Yorkshire college!’
‘I haven’t forgotten and I’m sure those students haven’t either.’
‘Don’t be so sarky, Laura. Anyway, I could try teaching piano and singing. And as you said, there’s always English. But not grammar, punctuation and that kind of thing. No, I’d like to try a different approach. I’ve always wanted to teach creative writing. You never know. I might find hidden talent in the back streets of Salford. A Charles Dickens or a Jane Austen.’
‘Dream on, Billy. But that won’t be much of a retirement for you, will it? I mean, isn’t coaching the same as teaching?’
‘Not quite, Laura. I shall be dealing with students as individuals instead of large lecture classes. Something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the chance. But all that’s in the future. The first thing we should do is take a good holiday abroad while we’re still in funds.’
‘Abroad? Where did you have in mind? Australia, the Bahamas, South America?’
‘No, none of those fancy destinations where you have to fly. Think of all the dangers you risk going to exotic places like that: cramped airline seats, travel sickness, claustrophobia, jet lag. And when you get there, food poisoning, stomach bugs, gyppy tummy, mosquitoes, malaria, and prickly heat.’
‘Why do you always exaggerate, Billy?’
‘I don’t always exaggerate. Only when I want to win an argument.’
They’d now reached the coffee stage of the meal and to round things off Billy ordered liqueurs: Benedictine for Laura and Drambuie for himself.
‘No, I was thinking of Ireland,’ he continued, stirring his coffee.
‘Why Ireland?’
‘You might remember that before we married, I cycled round the Emerald Isle with my old friend and school colleague, Alex. We had a great time. You were staying with your uncle in Ayr at the time. Ireland was such a lovely place that I vowed I’d return with you one day to show you just how beautiful it is.’
‘Yes, I remember.You sent me enough picture postcards to fill a whole album. We still have them somewhere. When you said a holiday abroad, I never thought of Ireland as “abroad” but it sounds like a good idea. I hope you’re not thinking of a driving tour.’
‘I wasn’t but what would be wrong with that?’
‘Because when you get into a car, you become a completely different person. You suffer from LPT, low patience threshold. You have a very short fuse and get easily rattled by people and things. As soon as you get behind the wheel, it’s as if another personality takes over and it’s like sitting next to Adolf Hitler, the way you go on. Everybody on the road is an idiot, except you. You should listen to yourself some time.’
‘Well, it’s true. Most of the drivers on British roads are dangerous maniacs who should be locked up. I wonder sometimes how many of them ever passed the driving test. I’ve even seen one bloke driving on a busy road and reading a map at the same time. And my hackles go up when I get stuck behind a caravan or some doddering old geezer driving down the middle of a country road at twelve miles an hour with a ten-mile tailback behind him.’
She laughed. ‘You never know. Perhaps it was a retired undertaker who thought he was heading a cortege. You’ll be on about women drivers next.’
‘Did you know that in Memphis there’s an old by-law which stipulates that women drivers must be preceded by a
man waving a red flag? You must admit that most women don’t know their right from their left. Ever seen one trying to read a street atlas?’
‘Don’t get me on to that subject. Never, never ask me to read one in a car for you again, Billy. When the car’s bouncing about and we’re going through a strange town, you expect me to find the A to Z and direct you to the exact street within ten seconds flat or you get all prickly.’
‘That’s because you say something like “Turn left at the next junction” and then you point to the right. Anyway, you’ll be relieved to know that I have no intention of driving in Ireland. I was thinking of a coach tour.’
He’d visited a travel agent’s and seen a brochure showing two young-looking filmstar pensioners sitting in a luxurious coach, raising their glasses of Dom Perignon and beaming happy smiles.
‘Now, that sounds really sensible,’ Laura said.‘Let somebody else do all the work and the worrying.’
‘Leave it to me, Laura. Tomorrow, I’ll go into Didsbury and arrange it all. Pay off a few invoices and fix up a holiday.’
They’d finished the meal and, with apprehension, he waited for the waiter to return with the bill. It was even more than he’d feared. Judging by the size of it, he wondered if they thought he wanted to put in a bid for the place.
‘Mercy!’ he said, looking over the various charges.
‘The French for thank you, m’sieu, is pronounced mer-see ,’ said the same supercilious waiter, still anxious to correct his accent.
‘I didn’t mean thank you,’ Billy said, studying the bill and handing over his credit card.
‘Shall I add the usual ten per cent for gratuities?’ the waiter asked.
‘Non, m’sieu, let’s keep that particular section blanc ,’ Billy replied with a ringing nasal twang.
The total cost of the banquet was enough to feed an African
family for a month and would have given Billy’s old mam and dad heart failure if they’d still been alive. And what did the meals amount to? Fish and peas for Laura, meat and potato for him.
‘Next time we’ll go to the local chippie for a takeaway supper plus a bottle of plonk from the outdoor,’ he said as they rose from the table.
‘Didn’t you leave a tip?’ Laura asked anxiously.
‘I did not. At the bottom of the bill, it says “Service not included” and I certainly go along with that, seeing how they made us wait. They’re the ones called waiters but we were the ones who did the waiting. Anyway, time to go home — that is, if you don’t mind sharing a taxi with Herr Adolf Schickelgruber.’
Ja, mein Fuehrer ,’ she answered sweetly.