Seedling 33: Day Pass
‘Your colleague Oliver is a fox’.
Charlie tapped her cigarettes against the sticky pub table, ‘what a wacky bunch, though. You really work with all these people??’
And by ‘all these people’ she meant Hannah, Renee, Marcos, Elena, Eoin, Bud, Marty, Patrick and two other chefs from the kitchen I’m not sure I’d even met, yet.
Plus Oliver. Who Charlie felt was a ‘fox’.
‘He’s engaged to be married, so I wouldn’t go there’.
She leaned in, lowered her voice. ‘He’s engaged to be married? That guy?! What is he, like, twenty years old??’
‘I think he’s twenty-three’.
‘C’mon! Who the fuck gets married when they’re twenty-three?’
She sat back in the booth, momentarily silent as the din of the pub ricocheted around us.
‘Maybe he’s gay,’ she bellowed, full throated. My face went flush as a few faces briefly flickered our way. I gestured her back into our conspiratorial huddle.
‘He’s not gay, he’s just mature, ok? Don’t go there’.
I had two friends in London. Charlie and Oliver. One for the real world and one for Seedling. I couldn’t afford to lose either and probably shouldn’t have them crossing streams, either. But that wasn’t anything I could much stop, now.
Charlie had texted me as we were evacuating Aldwych and making our way across Waterloo Bridge in search of functioning pubs. Seedling was fully-staffed for dinner service when the electricity went out. At first we thought it was just our wing, or Sandown House, even. Then we realised all the traffic lights were out on The Strand, across the street, up the hill…
‘OK, everyone. Let’s all stay calm and hang tight for a few minutes, okay?’
Hannah was at her imperial, crisis-manager best - even if none of us were panicking. As a group, we looked much the elementary school class on a museum field trip, half-asleep but pretending we were still paying attention.
‘It’s been thirty minutes. Can’t we just leave already?’. Elena-aka-Villanelle asked the question we were all thinking.
The decision came ten minutes later. It had to If Diana and Paulina were to have any real chance of reaching the one hundred and ten covers booked in for that evening.
The rest of us crept down the rear stairwell in the weak light of contraband mobiles, clumsily changed into our civilian wear and then practically tore out the side entrance and onto Waterloo Bridge.
The nervous energy, the elation with getting a free pass for the night, it spilled out of us as we trotted towards Southbank, barges and Thames Clippers weaving by, under our feet. Rene was entertaining me with one of her new past times; she’d mix metaphors into nonsense expressions and drop them into conversation with some of our second-language, European colleagues.
Marcos: It would make no sense open with only candles, no electricity.
Rene: Totally, that’d be like killing two birds with an apple a day.
Marcos replied ‘exactly’, Rene gave me a wink and they continued gossiping as we trundled along. Eoin was a few steps ahead, leaning in and whispering in Elena’s ear, occasionally pulling a stray lock of hair out of her face. Hannah and Oliver seemed to be having a more serious conversation, though it was just as likely the floor manager was talking about homeschooling her cats and Oliver was listening intently like the gentleman he was.
Marty and the rest were pulling up the rear, which was better for me. Marty was a chatterbox and I didn’t mind the distance; didn’t mind being slightly on the outside of this conversation with Rene and Marcos, either, putting in a thought here and there but mainly looking out on the Thames, curving westward with the glowing Hungerford footbridge, The London Eye, Big Ben and Parliament. I was in a different mood tonight, and not just because we got a day pass from the asylum, but because the Assistant Head Sommelier project was under way. Sure, I wasn’t allowed to talk about it, but I’d had my fitting that very morning - green trousers were being made for me as I walked this very pavement.
And for Kamil, too.
That was Mike’s little stick-and-move. He figured getting Kamil out of our court jester uniform and into management gear would blunt the news he had a new contemporary. I doubted it. But why dwell on it? I was looking forward to some (secret)celebratory pints, this evening.
Tonight’ll be fun, I thought.
Charlie’s text didn’t change that equation. But you know how it is - she was crashing in on another world. You craft a certain personality, a character in a job. You hone it and make it your identity. You don’t need a dear old friend storming in, taking a big drag on her Benson & Hedges, and then blowing the whole thing to bits.
Probably why I gasped when Charlie yelled out ‘gay’.
She continued to stare Oliver’s direction, likely trying to will the young Essex boy to look her way, to reel him in with a ferocious stare and see if the fiancee really had a firm hold on him. Eoin came by a minute later, offering to get us another pint - and getting a peek in at Charlie, at the same time.
Which made sense, since Eoin wasn’t used to women looking at other guys when he was in the room.
Charlie turned to me.
‘You having another?’
‘No, I really shouldn’t. I have to cycle back, after all’.
‘You’ve bought a bicycle??’
‘Yeah, I told you that. Only real way to get around from Canary Wharf’.
Eoin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, waiting for us to respond. ‘I’ll come back around, lads’.
‘OK, I know you say you need to get back, but you should really let that Irish kid buy you a few more beers. After all the whinging you’ve had to put up with...’.
*
Eoin had recently begun a bit of a campaign with me. How this came about, I wasn’t really sure. One minute we were breaking in two, ten case drops of wine, breakneck speed - and the next I’m boxed in up against the ‘fine wine rack’ at the far end of the red cellar, Eoin’s puppy dog eyes begging my sympathy, framed by four stray Château Palmers and a 1996 Soldera.
‘I mean, why is it Mike’s got it in for me? There’s nothing I can do right, man. Not a fecking thing’.
For my part, I played dumb. You think he does? Why would you think that?? Then I let him relay a half year’s worth of stories and incidences and nodded sympathetically. And I was sympathetic - to an extent.
‘When Seedling asked me to move over from Ireland I hesitated a bit, because you know, I had a brill life, really…Mike comes over to the table and tells the guest my suggestion was wrong and he had a different bottle and…paying a fortune to live in this absolute shithole and nobody even tells me that the…trapped on the Nightbus every Friday because Mike creates this sidework…’
Eoin was in some ways the weakest part of the team, but in other ways, not so much. His multi-tasking and focus were better than Cosmo’s and he had charm Kamil couldn’t muster on his best day. But Eoin lacked the wine knowledge, and worse, didn’t seem intent on fixing it. Frankly, he had probably coasted on his looks since his teens and didn’t intend to change; maybe Mike was one of the few to call it out.
Well, actually, not ‘call it out’. Mike said nothing. He didn’t even give Eoin the respect of a genuine confrontation. Mike’s was a stream-of-consciousness disdain, delivered without even saying a word.
So, now the young Irishman was coming to the newest and simultaneously ‘oldest’ member of the somm team for advice. And boy was he laying it on thick.
‘…and I’m so lonely man because not only I ain’t got my girl over here, but I don’t even have anyone who cares about me in my work or who wants to help me in my work and now this new somm is joining this week and I’m just some chump at the bottom of the rung and how can I develop as a sommelier if this is all I’m left with?’
I let the situation roll around in my skull a bit. Maybe I should give Eoin the benefit of the doubt? He’s signed up for the WSET3 exam. He’s trying, right? A little advocacy might go a long way for team camaraderie.
That was the very diplomatic side of my skull. The other side of my skull was thinking, This serial lothario’s gotten as far as he can with Kamil, read the situation and picked a side. If Mike think’s Eoin’s as dumb as he looks, he’s mistaken.
But, either way, Charlie was right. He owed me a few more beers.