Chapter 11 #2
He left her unsupervised while he drew four-pint jugs of lager, and when he looked back, she was carrying the loaded ski of green and red shots, delivering it to the standing table of inebriated office workers singing Wham!
’s ‘Last Christmas’ even though it wasn’t playing.
One of them handed her their mobile to take a picture while they lined up and lifted the mounted glasses to their mouths, throwing them back in one movement before erupting into laughter.
His eyes lingered on her, as she swapped the phone for the drained shotski with a smile.
But, instead of heading back to her seat, he was surprised to see Florrie rejoin him on his side of the bar.
‘Who’s next please?’ she shouted, and was met with a barrage of requests and waved credit cards. None of the lads wanted to be served by Hamish any more.
‘Ladies?’ he said with an accepting smile, serving a group of mums he used to go to school with, out on the razz without their husbands and determined to make the most of it before chucking-out time.
Hamish moved around Florrie as they darted between the fridges and the optics, the till and the card machine, uncapping bottles and only very occasionally squeezing past one another to reach the stacks of clean plastic glasses.
Florrie had slipped off her blazer to reveal a meshy black top, clingy and a tiny bit sheer.
‘Is this yer bird?’ one of the older regulars shouted over the soggy bar cloth as the night drew on and the club, and some of the clients’ behaviour, got messier.
He shushed the man, hoping Florrie – close enough to overhear – didn’t understand what he was asking. ‘She’s just a pal helping out,’ was all he said in reply, and when he’d glanced at her again, he saw that she was smiling broadly while she shoved cash tips into her jeans pockets.
It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed his evening shift quite this much.
The DJ booth was dark, the club lights up. After Kenneth had swept the room for sleepers, he announced, ‘That’s me off to the dairy,’ not forgetting to throw Hamish a warning look that seemed to say ‘watch yourself’.
Hamish hit the till buttons to calculate the totals and Florrie emptied her pockets of cash, offering it up into the night’s takings.
‘Naw, naw. You keep what you made,’ he told her.
‘What? No way. This is pure profit. Add it in!’
‘Sorry, can’t. Tips is tips. Ask any employment lawyer.’
‘Well, I’m not actually employed here,’ she said with a smile that betrayed how much she’d enjoyed the evening. Strands of hair had worked loose from her plaited crown and were damp and corkscrewing around her temples. ‘So, take it.’ She shoved the notes into the till.
He tried not to watch her pulling on her blazer now the room was cooled from chucking-out time’s open doors.
‘Thanks for your help,’ he told her, running his cloth. ‘It can get busy on Friday nights, especially now it’s just me.’
She pulled a thin-lipped smile that said she understood there’d been layoffs. The evidence was in the staff rotas and pay sheets she’d been poring over. A team of five down to just him and Kenneth.
Hamish sucked air through his teeth and shook his head, trying to clear the memories of firing all his old work pals.
‘Thanks for showing me the ropes,’ she told him, making to leave.
‘You’ve done bar work before. I can tell.’ He cracked a bottle of still water and detained her with it, then he did the same for himself.
She drank, seeming to weigh up whether she should reply.
‘I’ve done every kind of hospitality work,’ she said, then checked herself into silence.
‘Before you became the big boss?’
She shot him with finger guns and smiled tightly. ‘That’s me. The big boss.’ She drank again, and for a long time, her brows tented in the middle like she’d been dying of thirst.
‘I had more fun tonight than I’ve had in ages,’ he said, ‘I mean, at work,’ observing her once more, feeling a thin thrill of panic or discomfort coming off of her. ‘Not that I do very much but work.’ He’d hoped their awkwardness might have shifted after this evening but evidently not.
‘You looked like you were in your element,’ she said, searching around herself for her bag.
He wished she wouldn’t find it quite yet.
‘That’s because I love it here. I’m good at this job,’ he said, taking a punt.
She pulled her bag onto her shoulder, growing progressively steelier. ‘I agree. You are.’ She was turning to walk away.
‘It’s all I’ve ever known,’ he called after her, so she’d stop.
‘This was my first job out of college. My first place of my own too. My own mum and dad didn’t think I had it in me to run this place all those years ago, but look,’ he held out his arms, indicating the carnage of crushed plastic cups and spills on the floor.
‘It’s a decent club, you’ve got to admit, for a wee town. ’
‘I’m not saying it isn’t.’ She had almost made it to the exit, her heels jarring against his post-club tinnitus.
‘Have you made your decision?’ he blurted, halting her completely.
She didn’t turn to face him for some time and when she did, she looked like a doctor preparing to deliver a terrible prognosis.
‘I will, soon…’
‘Before you do, you need to spend a day with me running the shop,’ he said desperately.
Her looks hardened. ‘How many slope passes did you sell through the shop today, Mr Skelton?’ she said, her voice suddenly jagged with Scandi-Rocky Mountain texture.
‘I told you, my name’s Hamish. You’ve been in my home three days.
We’re not strangers; even if that’s how you do business in your company, that’s not how we do it here.
You can act all aloof and disengaged if you like but round here, we’re not just an economy, we’re an ecosystem, we’re family.
We’ve traditions, shared memories, customs. Working in Cairn Dhu means something.
We can put up with each other’s wee inconveniences because that’s the price you pay for community.
There’s so few of us left, and we’re clinging on by our fingertips, and if one of us lets go, we’ll all fall, and this town where we grew up, where we went to school, learnt to ski, had our first kiss, broke our hearts, it’ll be finished.
’ He pressed the water bottle to the middle of his chest. ‘This place is my heart! Business be damned!’
He watched her jaw tighten as he spoke.
‘How many customers paid for slope passes today?’ she said again.
Hamish couldn’t answer for the ache within him, and because they both knew there’d been only two parents with three teenagers out on the dry slope this morning, then there’d been a mum and her toddler wanting to do tubing on the kiddies’ slope after lunch, but the bairn had cried so much getting into the rented slope suit, she’d packed in that idea pretty quickly and he’d issued a refund.
‘Do you need a lift to wherever you’re staying?’ he said resignedly.
‘Goodnight, Hamish.’
The club doors swung shut behind her and Hamish leaned on the bar cursing himself for thinking for a moment she might see this place how he saw it.