Chapter 6
6
She had made lamb, spinach and sesame canapés. It was a recipe she found on the internet. It had been insanely difficult to get them wrapped up and looking pretty and Marisa was all but useless at it and kept saying ‘fuck it’ like a member of a punk band every time one fell apart. In the end, George had sent her to join Helen at Archie Reeves’ party, to assist in overseeing the tea dance. They would be tucking into corned beef and Spam sandwiches followed by scones. He had insisted on a wartime theme. He was going to be dancing to Glenn Miller and had put blackout curtains at all the windows of the hall. George only hoped he wouldn’t throw the hall into complete darkness or sound an air raid siren, or there could be injuries. Some of his guests were in their seventies.
She looked around proudly at the spread of food she had prepared for the after-show that night. The lamb canapés, the gammon and honey, the brie and grape tortilla wraps, the seafood medley parcels. It was her best work yet. It had challenged her but she had risen to that challenge. She smiled at the cellophane-covered platters and let out a sigh of satisfaction.
She was just considering indulging in a lager while no one else was around when there was a tap at the back door .
She knew the tap; he always knocked the same way, with confidence, perhaps a little cockily.
She opened the door and there he was. Thick, dark hair, easy smile, dressed in jeans and a checked shirt.
‘Hello, sexy,’ he greeted, looking George up and down the way he always did.
She looked anything but sexy in a hair net, gloves and an apron, but she smiled anyway, knowing the compliment was well meant.
‘Your bread m’lady,’ Simon spoke, putting a container of white and rye down on the worktop as he entered.
‘Thanks, Simon,’ George said appreciatively.
‘No problem. Wow, you’ve been busy today. Hope you’re not working yourself too hard,’ Simon remarked, looking around at the platters of food.
‘You know me,’ George replied with a shrug.
‘Actually, I don’t. Well, not well enough by half, in my opinion. I mean, I’ve tried to charm you with my thick-sliced wholemeal, but I think it’s high time you and me had a drink sometime,’ Simon suggested, smiling at her.
‘How about a coffee? I was just going to make one,’ George offered, picking up the kettle in an attempt to distract him from his offer.
‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it. Come on, George; we could just go to the pub or for dinner if you’d rather. I’m easy,’ Simon continued.
‘Yeah? Well I’m not,’ George snapped rather more viciously than she’d intended.
‘Whoa! Hold on a minute…’ Simon started.
‘Look, I’ve got a big job on tonight and I need to get organised,’ George spoke, lowering her eyes so as not to meet his gaze.
‘I was just asking you for a drink, George, no strings. Just a chance for us to get to know each other better, that’s all,’ Simon insisted .
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m just totally manic at the moment. We will have a drink sometime. Hey, I might even let you win at pool,’ George answered, trying to diffuse the awkward atmosphere that had descended.
He was sweet and he was handsome in a boyish sort of way, but he just wasn’t for her. She didn’t know how she knew that but she knew it. There was no spark, not one.
‘Sure, I understand. Listen, I’d better get on. Got to deliver to Mrs Devonish at the tea rooms next and you know how much she talks. I’ll catch you later,’ Simon said, replacing his smile.
‘Yeah, sure and thanks for the bread,’ George replied lamely.
‘See you.’
He closed the door behind him and George let out a sigh. She hadn’t meant to be quite so hard on him. She had basically insinuated he was desperate to get her into bed. Which he probably was, but he wasn’t brazen in his attempts to woo her and she had been flirting with him for months, albeit in front of Helen and Marisa. She probably owed him a date.
But she didn’t want to owe anyone anything. She didn’t want to feel obliged to do anything she didn’t want to do. There was no future in her and Simon. He would most probably take her on a great date, she might even sleep with him, but as much as he was good looking, she couldn’t imagine eating food off him or letting him cut her hair. And that was the sort of relationship she craved. It had to be intense and powerful and it had to be wild and passionate to be enduring. She wanted a soul mate. She wanted someone who ‘got’ her.
The phone began to ring.
‘Good afternoon, Finger Food,’ George greeted.
‘George, you have got to like come now, right now. It’s all kicking off here,’ Marisa shouted down the phone .
‘What? What’s happening? What’s that noise I can hear?’ George questioned as she battled to hear what her employee was telling her.
‘That’s the band playing Guns ’n’ Roses. They’ve all gone hyper from the Spam or something in the Spam, there’s like loads of really old people dancing really badly and head banging. Oh and Archie Reeves is being tended to by the paramedics. Seems he has a nut allergy he neglected to tell us about. Mum said she needs you here ’cause everyone is like looking to her for an explanation,’ Marisa tried to explain.
‘I’ll be two minutes,’ George replied.
‘Can you like make it one minute, if you drive really fast? Mum’s getting a migraine,’ Marisa responded.
‘Heading for the van right now, bye.’
When George arrived at the hall, the ambulance was just leaving, blue lights flashing. She parked up and entered the foyer. Hearing the strains of Bon Jovi coming from behind the double doors, she pushed them open and was greeted by what could only be described as utter carnage.
Thirty or so OAPs were on the dance floor thrashing themselves about to the band’s rock music. The blackout curtains had been torn down from the windows and were mostly being worn as capes or headdresses by the pensioners. There was food all over the floor and Helen and Marisa were trying desperately to contain the guests in the hall as a few giggling invitees were threatening to turn the occasion into an impromptu street party.
‘Who’s in charge?’ George asked, grabbing Marisa by the arm.
‘Er, well I don’t know really. Archie’s wife was kind of trying to keep things under control, but when he like keeled over, she obviously like couldn’t carry on and now she’s gone in the ambulance with him,’ Marisa said.
‘Doesn’t he have any other family here?’ George enquired, surveying the room for someone who looked remotely sensible.
‘That’s his dad over there, the one using the broom as a microphone. He’s ninety four,’ Marisa replied.
‘Well, great! That’s just great. No children? A nice, sensible daughter, maybe?’
‘He does have a daughter: Sandra. She was here earlier, but he called her a money-grabbing bitch after he cut the cake and she made a comment about savouring every special occasion. She left like just after that.’
‘OK, well the first thing I’m going to do is stop the band. You go and make strong black coffee in the biggest pot you can find,’ George ordered.
She hurried across the room, mounted the steps to the stage and grabbed hold of the lead singer. He was dressed up in 1940s military attire, as the theme of the party had demanded, but was now swinging the microphone around like he was a 1980s rock god.
‘Wind this performance up now and get off the stage,’ George hissed in his ear.
He immediately stopped his impression of the lead singer from KISS and signalled to his band mates to end the frenetic playing.
‘You were supposed to be playing Glenn Miller and Vera Lynn, not Bon Jovi and Def Leppard,’ George told him sternly when the music had finally ceased.
‘They asked for something more up tempo. We didn’t want to disappoint them and they really got into it,’ the lead singer replied.
‘Yeah, I know. Have you seen the destruction?’ George asked him, indicating the flailing arms of the partygoers and the upturned chairs and tables.
‘Sorry,’ he replied .
George jumped down off the stage and looked for the worst case of hyperactivity amongst the guests.
A woman with a pink rinse looked like her first point of call. She was still thrashing her head about, holding hands with an elderly man who seemed to have become as stiff as a board and was likely to be done an injury if she carried on shaking him with such ferocity.
‘Hello there, my name’s George. I’ve got some great coffee over here, just like the stuff you had back in the Forties, you know, before it was rationed. Shall we go and have a sit down?’ George suggested to the woman as she tried to capture her attention.
‘Coffee? Like mother used to make?’ the woman enquired, her eyes turning to George and a look of excitement spreading across her face.
‘The very same. Let’s go over here and have a sit down,’ George encouraged.
She shepherded the woman over to a chair and managed to sit the stiff gentleman down next to her. It was then she noticed a huge tureen of something bright orange in the middle of the table of food. It looked like jelly and it certainly wasn’t something she had provided.
Marisa came out of the kitchen carrying a tray of coffees and Helen, looking red faced and flustered, was dragging a gyrating pensioner over to a chair at the side of the room.
‘Helen, what’s this?’ George questioned, pointing to the suspicious-looking substance.
‘That’s the jelly Archie’s granddaughter made; apparently, it’s very nice. No, Mr Kendal, it’s best if you just sit still,’ Helen spoke, trying to hold her charge in his chair.
Marisa began passing out cups of coffee to the guests who were slowly coming off the dance floor and looking for somewhere to collapse.
‘Please tell me you haven’t eaten any of it,’ George said, picking up the bowl and sniffing at it .
‘No of course not, I just served it up.’
‘To everyone?’
‘Well, everyone that wanted it. That was most people,’ Helen replied as one of the old ladies vomited into her lap.
‘Great. Get the paramedics back here. Apart from being loaded with E numbers, it smells like it’s got rum in it and pretty soon, everyone’s going to get really sick,’ George announced.
‘Shittin’ hell!’ Marisa remarked as the stiff man keeled over on the floor.