Scratch (39 page)

There had been no problems in this area that I could recall twelve years ago, but a lot of time had passed. I may have picked up a few new tricks in those intervening years, but Paula had spent that time in London and
Europe
, so God only knew to what kind of standards she had become accustomed. Plus, I was older and had smoked many thousands more cigarettes. So, no pressure then. I could only pray we still
fitted
.

I recognised this train of thought as the destructive road to hell it was, and tried to evict it from my brain. It stayed out just long enough for me to pay the taxi-fare and make it up to the bathroom, before kicking its way back into my mind so forcefully I dropped my toothbrush down the toilet pan.

***

After a less than restful night I stumbled downstairs to grab a coffee before work, hoping it might get rid of the horrible morning-after taste in my mouth (brushing with your finger is no substitute and I was out of mouthwash).

‘Pay-day,’ my dad said, not looking up from his paper.

‘I’ll go to the bank before I get home tonight.’

Pay-day should be a good day, a happy day, a day full of promise and possibility. For me, though, it had become the day I forked over almost half my wages to this miserable git. Honestly, by the time I allowed for my fags and a couple of nights on the beer there was barely enough left to buy two or three DVDs and maybe a t-shirt from H&M or something. It was rubbish.

I still had the credit cards I’d paid off when I sold my flat, but had made a vow not to start running them up again until my annual salary equalled at least half my age, and, even including tips, I was still a good four grand away from that. Working in a pub can be a great life, but only if you’re willing to accept the terrible wages and complete lack of career prospects.

I hadn’t given too much thought to my future, work-wise. Paula had taken up residence in the part of my brain that dealt with ‘things to come’, and there hadn’t been a lot of room for anything else. I had, however, acknowledged that if I wanted us to have a decent life together then I’d better start thinking about strategies to get myself a little closer to what would soon be her earnings bracket. She wasn’t particularly materialistic or money obsessed, but she was a grown, independent woman who would, I was fairly sure, feel more comfortable if I didn’t have holes in my shoes and fag-burns on my shirt when we went out to her mate’s posh restaurant for dinner.

The coffee helped a bit, and I stopped at the garage for some mints before catching the bus into town.

I was surprised when Sammy opened The Basement’s door to me. I’d never seen him in before twelve.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘We had dinner last night. Everything’s okay.’

‘That’s all right then.’ He moved aside to let me in. ‘I’ll be checking with her later,’ he called after me as I headed for the office.

‘I would expect no less, mate,’ I said.

Kate was sitting at the desk, her head buried in ‘paperwork’ as usual. ‘
Hiya
,’ she said, looking up. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ I said. I wondered what she meant until I remembered the shocked look on her face after Sammy’s
bollocking
the day before. ‘It’s all sorted, thanks.’

‘That’s good,’ Kate said. ‘I didn’t realise how shaky things were with you and Paula.’

‘They’re not
shaky
,’ I said. ‘We had a wee blip, that’s all.’ I almost added
thanks to you
. ‘It’s cool.’

‘I’m glad. When I thought about it, Paula didn’t look too happy in The Brooklyn the other day.’

Thanks to you
, I almost said again, but held my tongue once more. ‘How come Sammy’s here?’

Kate’s face sagged. ‘We need to go over a few things,’ she said. ‘You might be on your own most of today, I’m afraid.’

She was too caught-up with her worries to notice my not quite silent giggle. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll cope,’ I said.

‘Cheers, honey.’ She smiled her oh-so-pretty smile and returned her attention to the pile of paper in front of her. I didn’t have a great view but they looked like a mixture of wage-cost breakdowns, drink and food order sheets and the ever-present stock results. That’s always what gets them in catering - staff costs and dodgy stock takes.

I was in the middle of setting up when Abe and Jed arrived, together.

‘Cheers, Jim,’ Abe said, powering past me through the door as he continued his conversation with his KP. ‘You need to shut the fuck up and learn a few things about life, wee-man.’

‘Piss-off, Grandad,’ Jed said, following Abe into the kitchen. ‘Beady Eye are fucking dinosaurs, they need a kick up the arse and so do you.’

I felt a warm glow; they would do well, those two.

Sammy and Kate remained ensconced in the office for most of the day. I almost started to feel sorry for Kate when Sammy stormed out at one point to get himself a coffee. ‘Everything okay?’ I asked.

Sammy looked at me. ‘How fucking hard can it be?’ he said, presumably rhetorically. He made a double espresso and downed it in one, before sighing and going back through.

I had everything cleaned, stocked, shiny and ship-shape when Sammy reappeared after four, this time with his jacket on.

‘I need a large bowl of wine,’ he said. ‘See you later, Jim.’

‘Okay, bye.’ It took a lot to get Sammy in such a state (pissing off his favourite girl in the world, for example).

He paused and turned on his way to the door. ‘I’ll be checking up on you too, mister,’ he said. ‘She better be okay.’

I held my hands up. ‘Promise.’

He stared hard at me for a second, then nodded and powered out of the door.

The bar was empty and I had bugger-all to do until Mark and Natalie arrived at five. I debated with myself for a moment or two and then, against my better judgement, went for the Good Samaritan option and stuck my head round the office door.

‘You okay?’ I said to Kate, who was in her usual position behind the desk.

She put on her smile as she looked up. ‘Yeah, yeah, fine thanks.’ It wasn’t difficult to spot the fear in her eyes.

‘You sure?’
Don’t do it
, I told myself. Paula will kill you.

‘Oh
fuck
, Jim. Why am I so bad at this?’

Shit,
now I’d done it. I couldn’t walk away from that with a polite smile, could I? ‘What’s the problem?’ I was a fool of a man.

Kate looked surprised. ‘Really?’ There was hope in her voice, actual hope. It was horrible.

‘Yeah, what’s up?’ And with that I was committed (and possibly should have been). I let the office door swing closed behind me and approached the desk.

‘It’s these bloody stock-takes and profit margins. I can’t get my head round any of it. It’s all the fractions.’ She held up a sheaf of paper.

‘I used to do the stock when I worked here before,’ I said. ‘Maybe I can help.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah, Sammy was always happy to palm jobs off when he could. What are you struggling with?’

‘I’m struggling with the fact that I’m shit at arithmetic,’ Kate said. ‘There’s 88 pints in a keg but I have to count them in tenths, how does
that
work? And there’s 28 measures in a bottle of spirits, but I’m supposed to be able to know just by looking how much is in them to the nearest twentieth. That doesn’t make any fucking sense to me. Plus, how are you meant to judge when the bottles are wider at the bottom than the top? I don’t even know what’s halfway, so what chance have I got?’

‘Turn them on their side,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘You turn the bottle on its side then judge the amount from how high up it goes at the base. Hasn’t Sammy told you that?’

Kate reddened. ‘No, but I think he thinks I already know that sort of stuff.’

‘But you don’t?’

‘No. I’ve just been making it up the best I could.’ Her eyes dipped.

‘Did you lie to get the job, Kate?’

 
She nodded. ‘I was a shit-hot barmaid, though.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘
I know
,’ she said. ‘I
hate
that. Do you think I don’t know what you all think of me, sitting in here while you do all the work? I’d fucking
love
to be out there, but I can’t because I’m too busy trying to work out all these bloody
sums
. Have you ever tried to work out staff costs as a percentage of overall takings? It’s a nightmare! I feel like telling Sammy to shove his Gross Profit up his arse, I’m telling you.’

‘That might be funny,’ I said. ‘He likes a good gay joke.’

Kate sat back in her chair, sighed, and seemed to relax a little. ‘You would know.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘Oh, he fucking loves you, doesn’t he?
The only barman I’d ever give a job to after so long
.
So much potential, that boy! If that
wee
arsehole could only stick at something he’d be a star
. Honestly, Jim, I hate you sometimes. Do you have any clue how paranoid I’ve been since you started? And then to make it even harder you’re with Paula, Sammy’s bloody golden child. You’re like the Anointed Ones. What chance have I got trying to compete with that? I can’t even do long division.’

That Kate had chosen to be so honest was unexpected; that she was willing to expose her feelings about both Paula and me was brave; that she had told me things I didn’t know,
good
things, with regard to Sammy’s opinion of me was seemingly both selfless and altruistic. It would have been unfair of me to respond in anything other than an equally open, truthful way.

‘Paula hates you,’ I said.

Kate laughed. ‘No wonder. I hate her, as well. It’s a girl thing. Natalie and Lucy hate me too, don’t they?’

Again, honesty was the order of the day. ‘Yes, yes they do.’

‘Daisy the lazy cow,’ Kate said.

‘You know about that?’

‘That door’s made of ply-wood, Jim. It’s not exactly soundproof.’ All traces of Kate’s earlier insecurity seemed to be gone now we weren’t talking about adding up numbers. ‘I’d be the same if I was them. I
was
the same in the last place I worked. I hated my prick of a boss. All he ever did was sit in the office kidding-on he had lots of paperwork to do and left the rest of us to slog it out behind the bar. Sound familiar?’

‘Well yeah, obviously,’ I said. ‘But why do you hate Paula?’

Kate did a thing with her eyebrows that saved her having to say the words
are you a
muppet
?
‘Why does she hate me?’

I thought for a while. ‘I don’t actually know, to be honest,’ I said eventually. ‘She just does. I think it’s something to do with Sammy.’

Kate nodded. ‘Of course it is. I hate Paula because Sammy loves her unconditionally and I wish he felt the same way about me. Paula hates me because I work for Sammy now and she doesn’t, so she’s scared I might take her place in his affections somewhere down the line, which is bollocks, obviously. As I said, it’s a girl thing.’

‘Nothing to do with me, then?’ I said, a little disheartened.

‘Sorry, mate. I could use your help with this stock business, though. I’m struggling like a girl, here.’

‘Give us a look.’ I’d always been good with unimportant things like numbers and words. I saw it as a curse, more than anything; another of those little jokes God amuses himself with.
Here’s fun
, he must have thought.
Let’s make this Jim guy good at things he hates and crap at the stuff he’d like to do. That’ll be a laugh.
And so, I couldn’t play the saxophone or cure sick animals (didn’t get the grades for vet school), but show me a
squew
-whiff stock count and it generally only took a minute or two for me to spot what was going wrong.