Glory was called in to interview at the agency the following week.
She borrowed money from Faith and made a trip to Primark to buy plain black trousers, a black button-down shirt and flat black ballet pumps. Through the thin soles she could feel each piece of gravel that passed underfoot as she walked up the horseshoe drive and toward the service entrance of the agency’s headquarters.
In the small foyer of the converted stately home she was offered water in a plastic cup while she waited with the others. The interview would take up at least half the day, with a one-on-one “conversation,” some basic training and a test. They would find out there and then if they had the job.
The others were all younger than Glory and were all women apart from two men. One of the young men looked like he was wearing his school uniform, right down to the short, thick tie bunched around his neck. He sat with one arm draped across the back of his seat, his legs spread wide and feet pouring outward. He chewed gum loudly and tried to make conversation with a girl to his right. She politely responded in three words or fewer, looking concerned, as if his relaxed attitude might be contagious and she might forfeit employment because of a poor choice of seat.
Eventually the group of hopefuls was taken from one waiting room to another, and handed training booklets to read before they were called into the interview room. Glory was interviewed second, and she sat across the table from a woman with wide eyes and a severe ponytail. The woman introduced herself as Sunnie, and offered a firm handshake before running her eyes over Glory’s CV.
Glory hadn’t been nervous until now, figuring that her previous experience in the company would more or less secure her a role. But as Sunnie ran the tip of her pen over her employment history, she tried to hastily think of a response if the woman were to ask why she was taking itinerant shift work after having once been on a career path. But when Sunnie’s eyes found the name Silversprint on the sheet of paper in front of her, she looked up.
“Ah, you’ve worked here before?”
Glory nodded.
“Welcome back.”
The briefest of smiles graced her face.
From then on the interview was a formality. Sunnie wasn’t interested in why Glory was going from a salaried role to minimum wage work. All she cared about was how much of the job she could remember and if she still knew what the company’s values and uniform were.
“Good luck with the assessment,” Sunnie said, rising to shake Glory’s hand and signal the end of the conversation. “I doubt you’ll need it.”
Glory left the room feeling confident.
For the training and assessment they were led to a wing which had retained the home’s former splendor. Everyone was quiet and nervous, apart from the boy with the short fat tie who made comments about the paintings and the rugs and how far they had to walk. Glory wanted to tell her potential colleagues to loosen up, but she remembered how high the stakes had felt trying to get her first proper job as a teenager, so she left them to their small anxieties.
They reached a hall set out with four round banqueting tables dressed in white cloth. There was a smaller foldaway table with a place setting laid out and next to it a dumbwaiter loaded with trays, cutlery and glasses. The man who had been leading them silently was tall and thin, with a shadow of gray around his jaw, and when he addressed them he did so in a continental accent.
“I am Franco and I will train you this afternoon.” He dipped his head in a slight bow, and the boy with the tie bowed back.
They began by learning how to load trays with champagne glasses, a task that looked simple but was not. Faces turned pink and puckered as trays tipped over and plastic glasses skittered across the floor. Glory, with the advantage of previous training, did it the first time around and spent the rest of the time trying to help a nervous girl with long brown braids whose hands were shaking.
“Always start at the center,” Glory said, showing her how to hold her tray with one hand, while the other lined up the glasses. But the girl was too nervous to listen properly, and her tray kept tipping this way and that, glasses tumbling through the air. She was not going to get the job.
The next tasks were learning how to pour champagne, collect and stack empty plates, and lay the table. Some of these skills had served Glory well and impressed her American colleagues when a discussion turned to fine dining and she had been able to guide them through a place setting. They assumed it came from the Downton Abbey etiquette training all British people went through. Glory didn’t let on she learned it from serving others.
After the training was finished, the hopefuls were given a short break before the assessment began.
“I’m so gonna fail!” the girl with the braids wailed as they went to get more water.
“No, you’ll be fine,” an elfin girl offered unhelpfully.
Glory would probably never see this girl again, but it was still no use lying to her. She was not good at this. She forgot which way was clockwise when it came to collecting plates and had no sense of coordination, which was sure to send gravy spilling if the plates they had been playing with had any real food on them.
“Is this your first job interview?” Glory asked, and the girl chewed her lip and nodded.
“Then just treat it as a practice run, relax a bit, this isn’t life or death, y’know?”
But the girl’s watery eyes suggested something else.
“Listen,” Glory lowered her voice. “There are literally a million agencies like this in London. If you don’t get this job, you just apply for another agency and you’ve got a head start from this experience.”
The girl swallowed and nodded again.
“Don’t overthink it and don’t rush. Silver service is about efficient service but it’s not about being the quickest if it’s gonna make you drop soup in someone’s lap. Take your time, OK?”
The girl took a deep breath and tried to smile. She looked even younger than the rest of them, and Glory wanted to give her a hug but settled for a light pat on the back. Then they all headed back inside for the assessment.
Glory breezed through the tasks that were meant to test them, and for all his class-clown demeanor, the boy with the short fat tie transformed into another person when the time came for his own service skills to be judged. Franco could barely hide his astonishment. Everyone else was average.
When the task had been completed by all, Franco instructed them to fall into place and he walked the line with his notepad like a general inspecting his troops.
“Tomasz and Glory, you two were very good, I am impressed.”
The boy bowed again and this time Franco smiled.
“The remaining—you were OK. You will pass, but you must go home and practice!”
The girl with the braids looked like she had just got through to the next round of The X Factor.
“If you want to start work immediately, we have some shifts this week. Oh, and just a note about uniform: black shoes, black socks, black trousers and if ladies wish to wear a skirt it must come down to the knees—no longer, no shorter. When applying for a shift you will be told what color shirt to wear, it will either be black or white, and your appearance must be well kept, no prominent jewelry, and your hair must be groomed.” On this last point he looked at Glory’s twist-out and the girl with the braids. “We do not approve of dreadlocks or these loud styles.” He waved a hand around his head in what Glory assumed was meant to demonstrate the “volume” of her hair.
“Excuse me, sorry, these aren’t dreadlocks,” the braided girl said.
“Well, whatever they are called, they are not one of the approved hairstyles.”
“B-but, I just got these done, it cost me eighty quid.” The girl looked upset again.
“Well, maybe you talk to Sunnie about it before you leave,” Franco said with a shrug. “Everyone please pick up an employee handbook before you go. Congratulations and welcome to Silversprint.”
The girl with the braids found Glory as the group filed out of the room, her fingers anxiously knitted together as she began talking in a hurried whisper.
“I don’t want to take my braids out, I got them done especially for the interview, I thought they’d make me look smart—”
“Trust me, it’s really not that deep,” Glory reassured the girl, but she had already mentally checked out and was ready to escape. She collected her handbook, signed up for a couple of shifts and walked out into the spring sunshine.
Glory moved quickly, not wanting to be forced into conversation with a fellow recruit heading in the same direction. She saw three missed calls from Julian and a message from Faith.
“How did it go?”
“Got the job. Obviously,” Glory replied. Then she called Julian back.
“Yooo! Where you at? Been calling you all day!”
His tone was buoyant, as though he hadn’t been neglecting her since the day he decided to take in Telly. Glory wanted to point out that three missed calls in the space of twenty minutes did not equate to “calling someone all day,” but she bit her tongue.
“I was at a job interview,” she said.
“Oh, for real? Where?”
“Just some waitressing thing.”
There was a pause.
“Why would you wanna do that?”
“Because I need money.”
“That’s not money, that’s chicken change.”
Glory was taken aback by the disgust in his tone. It threw her off momentarily.
“Money’s money, innit,” was all she said in the end.
“If you need money, you know I’ve got you like that.”
“I’m not trying to be a kept woman, Julian. Plus, you’ve been a bit unreliable recently . . .”
“So?”
“What’s going on anyway?” Glory could sense the fight in Julian’s voice, and despite her impatience she was not ready to spar with him.
“I wanted to take you out.”
Glory was still irritated but she was also hungry, open to a bit of attention, and to be honest, she had missed him.
“All right, let me go home and change, then I can meet you.”
“Cool, call me when you’re ready.”