Chapter Twelve
He that feeds upon charity has a cold dinner and no supper.
(Turkish proverb)
In the distance, a respectable arrangement of lights gives the hint that here at least could be one building worth stopping for and not just another crumbling farmhouse or hairy-roofed cottage.
A flash of oncoming headlights and the angry hoots of some very insistent horns suggest to the arrogant dickhead with the show-offy car that he might be safer sticking to the British side of the road.
When they finally arrive at the exclusive country house hotel, an establishment which a kindly lady at the Rough Fell Post Office has recommended to Arnie as the finest in the Lakes (the landlord at The Wordsworth having insisted that no grub in the area could possibly match his own), the harassed and exhausted driver pulls up with some relief outside the front entrance.
The car is already attracting some admiring looks.
And rightly so. It is a vehicle which Arnie has hired at huge expense, with serious hints of future location filming, from a swish dealership in the nearest major centre.
Arnie reckons that it makes him look so hot that he could happily even screw himself (an option that has been suggested to him quite often in the past).
Sadly, the same can’t be said of his guest for the evening, who appears simply to have altered the layering of her cardigans, so that a former under-cardy is now promoted to top dog. But she has at least added a flower to her bobbly hat, even though it looks more like a fern.
A smart diner in a tuxedo is emerging from the building as they arrive. Arnie hands him the car keys.
“This is costing me a bundle to rent,” he tells the perplexed man. “So park it close. And no monkeying around with the radio.”
Arnie, her attentive escort for the evening, guides Noreen gently towards the hotel doorway, where she stops. Rigid. Frozen. Unable to move. Arnie practically has to drag her into the lobby. He can feel the poor woman shaking, or at least wobbling, under all her layers.
“I have never been anywhere like this before, Arnie,” says a wide-eyed and more than somewhat intimidated Noreen Millburn.
“Get outta here!” marvels her host, in well-faked surprise. “Well, Lady Noreen of Rough Fell, eat your heart out! And the evening has only just begun.”
Winking suggestively to the intrigued and only slightly repelled receptionist, the not-very-quiet American accompanies his guest for the evening into the sparkling, triple-rosetted, country-house hotel restaurant.
“Prepare for the night of your life!”
***
Arnie Garth is quite accustomed to people staring when he enters a classy joint.
But he knows that in LA this is because they stare at everyone who comes in, just in case it is someone they know, ought to know or would very much like to know.
He rarely fits into any of these categories, as he is in a particular and rather more circumspect niche, albeit a highly lucrative one.
Wannabe stars are hardly likely to rush up to him in public or ask to join him at a table in order to demonstrate what they are capable of, as there are laws against such things at mealtimes. Even in LA.
The staring this evening is of a different order.
What on earth is he doing with her? or What in God’s name is she doing with him?
is a game played with unremitting joy and blissful meanness all over the globe.
It appears to have reached its apogee this drizzly evening.
It is not that Arnie is a catch so magnificent that one could expect only a goddess to match his aura; it is simply that the component parts of this intriguing couple would appear to inhabit two totally different worlds.
One tackily foreign, the other vaguely subterranean.
Yet Arnie is far less focused on the manner in which other bemused diners are looking at him than he is preoccupied with how intensely his wide-eyed guest is gazing back at them.
And not just at them. A bedazzled Noreen is taking in everything from the velvety drapes to the gleaming silverware to the glittering chandeliers.
And, of course, the sneering yet unctuously subservient waiting staff.
Finally, she turns to Arnie and says, in the same voice she uses for calling her sheep back home and scaring away the foxes from her chicken-pens, “Wouldn’t this place make a fantastic shelter for the homeless?”
Arnie sighs. He really has no answer to this. Nor, apparently, has the remainder of the restaurant’s clientele, who are looking at each other with a mixture of furrowed brows and shaking heads.
“Hey, why don’t I order some wine? Red or white? How about three of each?”
“I don’t drink, Arnie.”
“Of course you don’t,” her host sighs resignedly, “crystal meth?” Naturally his native wit leaves this particular dazed native simply confused.
A smartly dressed young waiter has been observing them in some disbelief.
As if he has drawn the shortest straw, he makes his tentative way to the table and hands each of them a menu.
He then sidles swiftly away, fearing they might be infectious, and escapes back into the kitchen, a succession of dramatic sighs left to hover in the air.
“Okay, let’s order,” says Arnie swiftly, starting to read. He smiles at his guest in what he has been led to believe is his most irresistible manner. And nothing to do with it usually being aimed at young women who aspire to a career in erotic cinema.
Noreen, however, appears to be ducking rather nimbly out of range of this particular megawatt beam, immersed as she is in the tall, leather-bound object she has just been handed.
“I don’t understand, Arnie,” she says, shaking her head. She is almost in tears. “This menu…”
Arnie checks it out. “It’s in French, sweetheart. They do that in fancy places, so everything sounds expensive. Looks like they don’t even translate it here, lazy stiffs.”
He looks around and snaps his fingers at a waiter with fake insouciance, which causes all the diners around them to pretend even harder not to stare at the couple.
“I’ll get penguin-boy.”
After a fair amount of judicially ignored snapping, and close to the point at which the unseasonally attired guest is starting to resemble a coked-up Flamenco dancer, another bored waiter strolls languidly over.
“ Hi,” says Arnie, swiftly shoving a bill into the waiter’s top pocket and winking at him. “This is kind of a special occasion. Know what I’m saying?”
The waiter nods, although he can’t for a moment deduce what sort of special occasion this could be and would rather not employ his imagination in the exercise.
Arnie understands that it probably won’t aid the situation to tell him that if Cupid doesn’t get his friggin’ arrow through all those cardigans by Sunday, this guest from across the pond will have had his Last (criminally overpriced and French) Supper.
“What’s good today?” he asks, then smiles at Noreen. “Or should I say, bon?”
“No, you shouldn’t. And it’s all good, sir,” says the waiter, a bit sniffily, in Arnie’s opinion, but hey, this is England. “May I recommend the brochette d’agneau?”
“Oh yeah. You most certainly may. I love a good – broshet. And the lady will have the same. But see that you make ’em biggies. None of your nouvelle BS. And no skimpin’ on the fries.”
He winks at Noreen. How can she not love his restaurant presence, his cosmopolitan elan?
The evening is going even better than he expected.
***
“AAAYYGGHH!”
The mounting shrieks and wails of the bizarre woolly female at table eleven, a person who appears to have decided to savour the Michelin stars whilst resembling the Michelin man, are starting to convert the other diners’ already piqued interest into something approaching restaurant trauma.
Unaware of the stares, Noreen is gazing down at her plate of neatly skewered meat as if she has just entered a crime scene. Which perhaps, for her, it is. Arnie, who is all too aware of the unwanted attention, tries frantically to comfort her, before they find themselves ejected.
“Noreen! Sweetheart! Cousin. It’s not like you knew the friggin’ sheep! Hey, tell you what – I’ll order some carrots. Nice big, raw ones. You’re not pals with any oysters, are you?”
The man’s comforting is to no avail; his dinner guest is inconsolable. Finally, Noreen Millburn shakes her still-bobbled head.
“I’m not hungry, Arnie. I knew I shouldn’t have come.” She stares at him in total bewilderment, tears glooping down her face, as she gestures all around the gilded triple-rosette cage. “This – this isn’t me! Why did you bring me here? You hardly know me!”
Arnie leans across the table and hands Noreen a monogrammed silk handkerchief, hoping that she won’t actually discern what happy little body part the monogram designer has cleverly contorted his client’s initials to represent.
She wipes her eyes and face, then blows her nose with some considerable power.
He gestures that she should maybe keep the handkerchief.
When the snorting and subsequent deluge have passed their peak and he can make himself heard without alerting the entire restaurant, who right now appear to be all ears as well as all eyes, Arnie adopts his most sincere and indeed humblest voice (which has been known to work gangbusters in the past).
“Okay, Noreen, sweetheart. It’s time I levelled with you. I brought you here because… because…” The man can hardly talk, he is so choked up.
Noreen knows this because he stutteringly informs her so, before segueing more nimbly into the autobiographical bit.
“Noreen, sugar, people don’t know this, don’t even suspect it.
Of me, Arnie Garth, big shot Hollywood producer of – uplifting, faith-based motion pictures.
They think my life must be one long round of adoration and non-alcoholic parties.
Truth is, I – I’m alone in the world. Entirely alone.
Orphaned. Unmarried. Unloved. Unwanted. Hard to believe, I know. ”
He allows time for her to interrupt, which she doesn’t, so he continues with his final pitch.
“And because – goddammit – you’re a very attractive woman, Noreen!”
“No, I’m not.”
“You got me. But hey, who needs tits and ass? Those I can…” He has a feeling people are leaning so far over from other tables they’re about to topple into the aisles or their entrees, so he dials down to a whisper. “You’ve got something better than looks, Noreen Millburn. You know what you got?”
“A sheep?”
“No! Forget the friggin’ sheep, for Chrissakes! I’m talkin’ about what brings us together. I’m talkin’ about our souls.”
“Arseholes?” says Noreen over-loudly, which would be a conversation stopper anywhere. “What have arseholes got to do with it?”
“Everything!”
Arnie is a touch bemused by the reaction, as to his unschooled American ears she is just repeating his sincerities in a silly accent. But he ploughs on.
“What I’m saying is, Noreen sweetie-pie, you’ve got a soul the size of – of the Lake District. In fact…” And at this point he looks around, just in case I, Ambrose, might be listening. “Between you and me, Ms Millburn, you got a soul to spare.”
Near the wind, Arnie Garth. Near the wind.
Now that she is persuaded that the man is not, in fact, talking orifice – and despite her own better judgment – Noreen begins genuinely to soften at this.
“Oh… oh… thank you, Arnie. No one has ever said this about me.”
“Perhaps it’s just ’cos they couldn’t get near enough.
” He shakes his head, in what he hopes will pass as genuine admiration.
“I mean, the way you help people. Not normal decent people… we’re talking sad losers here, no-hopers, deadbeats, sickos, dumb stinky livestock.
” He smiles as a new thought strikes him.
“Hey, it… it’s like this movie I just been making – about the animal nut. You know, Saint Francis the Sissy.”
Noreen brightens at this. Her pale-blue eyes, which aren’t her worst feature, begin to sparkle and gleam.
“Getaway! My late mum used to call me Saint Noreen!”
“Get outta here! Well, Saint Noreen, did I tell you I was an orphan? Twice.” Tears well in Arnie Garth’s cunning little eyes.
“Both parents. One to Ebola, the other a stray bullet. I got nobody.” His voice begins to crack.
“If… if I spend just one more lonely night alone and on my own, by myself, with no one to talk to, no one to care about me, playing solitaire for one and doing other solo stuff, I think I’ll surely die.
” He grabs his napkin and wipes his eyes.
“I’m… sorry. I’m so sorry, Noreen. You must think I’m beyond pathetic. Trust me, I don’t usually…”
Her strong, cracked hands, which still smell slightly of sheep and goat despite a goodly rub of her best carbolic (on both her and her furry companions), move slowly across the table to make contact with his own. He feels their roughness, as they graze his suntanned skin like sandpaper.
“Oh, Arnie. If there’s any way I can help…?”
Arnie swiftly removes a hand and grabs a room key from his pocket. “Room forty-three. I’ll be up in a minute.” He slides it across. “Make yourself at home.”
A muffled cheer rises from the surrounding tables, although whether it is from admiration or relief, we shall probably never know.