Claudia
Claudia
THE OUTDOOR MARKET WAS A MASS OF TRADERS and shoppers, and vast enough for Ellen to feel slightly overwhelmed – but it certainly sold everything they needed. By the end of the day they’d made several trips back to the flat with their purchases, including two single mattresses that the trader had rolled up with string. On your heads , he’d said, only way , so they’d trudged back feeling foolish, although nobody paid them much attention. At least, Ellen thought, they wouldn’t have to sleep top to tail on the awful couch again – just as well they’d been too exhausted to care.
Their first dinner in the flat was poached eggs on bread – they’d forgotten a toaster – after which they returned to the pub of the night before. They sat at the counter and Claire ordered drinks before asking the barman if there were any jobs going.
‘The manager isn’t here,’ he said. ‘She’ll be in tomorrow.’ He looked younger than them, but his sideburns were impressive. ‘You got a number?’
‘No, I’ll come back. What are her hours?’
Next morning Ellen left Claire scrubbing the oven in Notting Hill and set off on her own job hunt. She’d start locally, see if she could find any bookshops within walking distance.
Two blocks from the flat she came across her first one, located between an off-licence and a premises that called itself Notting Hill Sandwich Bar. As she pushed open the door of the bookshop, a sudden cry made her turn to see a load of packages tumbling onto the path from the arms of a dark-haired woman. Ellen darted about, helping to retrieve them.
‘Oh, thank you so much!’ the woman exclaimed in accented English. ‘You are so kind! You wait, please – I open.’ She set her armload on the window ledge of the sandwich bar and rummaged in a pocket and pulled out a key. Opening soon , Ellen read on a sign in the only window, which otherwise was covered with sheets of brown paper.
‘Please,’ the woman repeated, motioning Ellen to follow her inside. The interior was gloomy, the daylight denied access by the brown paper. ‘You please put here,’ the woman said, flicking a light switch to reveal a little table just behind the door. ‘ ?Ahí está! ’ she exclaimed, sweeping an arm around. ‘Look my new business! You like it?’
‘It’s lovely.’
It was. The walls were painted the same rich yellow as the shop name, with a fat red border above and below. The countertop was chunky and wooden, a glass-fronted display unit taking up half of it. A large blackboard was attached to the wall behind, a cash register and a coffee machine on a shelf underneath. Someone had written a giant ?Hola! in different-coloured chalks on the board, and a yellow smiley face beside it. The floor was wooden too, the boards smooth and pale.
It wasn’t big enough to be a sit-down place. It had to be a takeaway outlet, with a bench against one wall – for the queue, Ellen assumed. She wondered if it was just sandwiches on offer.
‘The colours of the Spanish flag,’ the woman said, gesturing towards the wall. ‘The red, the yellow.’
‘Oh yes, the flag, of course. Well, best of luck with it.’ Ellen made to turn away.
‘I am from Spain,’ the woman said, abruptly thrusting a hand – short purple nails, a glitter of rings – in Ellen’s direction. ‘I am Claudia.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Ellen, from Ireland.’
Claudia clasped her hands in delight. ‘You are from Ireland – that is wonderful! Ireland is so beautiful!’
‘Yes, it is, but Spain has a lot more sunshine.’ Again she moved towards the door. ‘Well, I’d better—’
‘You want job?’ Claudia asked.
Ellen stopped. She was joking. It had to be a joke. She didn’t look like she was joking though.
‘A job? You’re offering me a job here?’
‘Yes, I offer you a job. My sister say she will come from Spain, but now she is not coming, so I need worker. I want to open next week. You have job?’
‘Well . . .’
Unbelievable. Without knowing the first thing about Ellen, apart from the fact that she was Irish and could pick boxes off a path, she was asking her if she wanted a job. Ellen had considered Ben’s phone interview unconventional, but Claudia hadn’t even interviewed her, hadn’t asked a single question, apart from enquiring if she’d like a job.
Did she want to work here? It wasn’t a bookshop – but did that matter? Might a new work environment not be a good thing, given that she was bent on forgetting her last one?
‘I’m actually looking for employment,’ Ellen admitted. ‘I’ve just arrived in London’ – and again, the Spanish woman’s face lit up.
‘So we meet when you are looking for work! It is a sign, a very good sign! You must come and work here! I like you, Ellen. You help me in the street; it is the sign of a good person.’
An offer of work, simply because she’d done what any right-thinking person would surely have done in her place. Claudia must truly be desperate. Ellen decided it wouldn’t hurt to find out more.
‘You sell sandwiches here? Is that right, just sandwiches?’
‘Yes, yes, and the potato crisps, and hot drinks. You will make the sandwiches and clean afterwards. That is all.’
Sounded easy enough. ‘And how many days a week?’
‘Five days, Monday to Friday, ten o’clock until four o’clock.’
She liked the sound of that. The late start would give her a lie-in, and weekends off would give plenty of time to explore the city. And it was five minutes from the flat, which meant no commuting costs.
‘Um, what salary are you offering?’
Claudia named a sum. It was more than Ellen had earned in the bookshop, but here she had big rent to pay. With her savings pretty much eaten up already from her half of their initial outlay to the landlord and the cost of furnishing the flat, she needed to earn as much as she could to stay afloat.
‘You take the job, Ellen?’
She crossed fingers, out of sight. ‘If you could increase the salary a little – our rent is high, I’m not sure if . . .’
‘I give you extra five pounds every week,’ Claudia said promptly, just like that. ‘OK?’
Not much of an improvement, but some. Should she check out bookshop rates of pay before she said yes?
No. Claudia had already shown herself to be impulsive – and with a week to go before opening, she needed someone fast. Ellen might lose this opportunity if she didn’t grab it right away. And she thought Claudia would be fun to work with.
‘You would be working with my mama, her name is Gloria. She is . . . strong woman, but if you work hard she will be OK.’
Oh dear. Gloria, not Claudia. Strong woman could mean anything. ‘You wouldn’t be here at all?’
‘No – my husband and me have other sandwich bar in Ealing – we work there Monday to Friday. On Saturday we will close Ealing and come here, because Notting Hill is more busy on Saturday with the market. Mama is OK,’ she assured Ellen. ‘Really, she is OK.’ So Ellen agreed to take the job, and Claudia gave a little cry of delight, and just like that, four days after leaving the bookshop, Ellen was employed again.
And when she met Claire later, it was to find that she was sorted too. ‘Five nights a week, three lunchtime shifts, and more if I want them. Meals included at work, and I’ll sneak home what grub I can. You might be able to swipe stuff from the sandwich bar too.’
‘I’ll have to check out Gloria first.’
Next day, Ellen gathered her coins together and made some calls from the phone box on their street.
‘That’s good,’ Frances said. ‘Any job is good to start you off. If you don’t like it, you can always look around for another one. London must be full of jobs.’
‘Ever heard of a sandwich bar?’ she asked Danny in the next call.
‘I’ve heard of a sandwich, and a bar.’
She filled him in quickly, conscious of the ticking seconds and her dwindling coins. ‘Never know who’d drop in for a ham and cheese.’
‘Sounds like fun.’
‘A bar?’ her mother said. ‘Do they serve alcohol?’
‘No, just sandwiches, and teas and coffees. Claire got a job in a bar – I mean, a proper bar.’
‘Well, that’s fine for her, that’s all she knows, but I wouldn’t like the idea of you working in that environment. I hope you’re eating properly and getting enough sleep. Joan wants a word.’
‘How’s your apartment?’ Joan asked, and Ellen told her it was basic but it would do them for the moment. ‘Notting Hill is really colourful – and there’s a big carnival here next month.’
‘Sounds great – and I bet you’ll meet someone nice soon.’
Not yet. Soon was far too soon.