The Sinking Admiral. Simon Brett
would make of the shots of her clearing tables, her hair lank with sweat, her top sticking to her body, the ribald remarks that would follow her progress around the room. ‘I’ll get Meriel, and you can film her,’ she said. Meriel should have cleaned her kitchen by now, and their usual practice was for the cook to help clear the bar. And, boy, would she enjoy being filmed!
Only Meriel wasn’t in the kitchen, nor were any of the long streaks of pimply-faced teenagers who helped her at the busiest times and were supposed to clean the cooking utensils and keep the washing-up machine charged.
‘We’ll settle for you,’ Ben said, looking at the fat-stained stove, encrusted stainless-steel bowls for prepped ingredients, and the sink piled with dirty saucepans.
Amy forced him back to the bar. ‘You’ve got quite enough material to feed your nasty sub-text. Now tell your cameraman to get back to his B & B. I’m sure his union won’t allow him to film any more today.’ But when she looked around for Stan there was no sign of him; he seemed to have given up for the evening.
‘“Nasty sub-text”, what are you talking about, Miss Walpole?’ said Ben, seemingly untroubled by his colleague’s departure. ‘All we are doing is shining a light on the problems that pub-owners face in these troubled times.’
‘Don’t give me that injured puppy-dog look.’ Amy announced loudly that the bar was closing, that it was time customers left, and started to load more dirty glasses on her tray. ‘I know exactly what you are up to, and it’s disgraceful.’
‘Disgraceful? What talk is that? We’re shooting actuality here, making a documentary. There’s nothing disgraceful about our activities.’ She seemed to have shaken him out of his usual complacency.
‘The way your programme makers lull your victims into thinking they will get a fair hearing in front of the nation! Instead they are made to look like fools. Your programme won’t save the Admiral Byng. By the time you’ve finished with us, it’s more likely to close our doors for good.’ This last was hissed in an undertone; Amy had no intention of spreading the word before the TV programme did it for her.
She wouldn’t have been surprised if Ben had turned his back on her and gone up to his room. Instead he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans (they had ‘Gucci’ stamped all over them), leaned back against the bar, and fixed her with an injured look.
‘The camera cannot lie.’
‘Don’t try and get sanctimonious with me.’ Amy was now so angry she could hardly speak. But she seemed to have punctured his smug carapace, and something approaching a human being who had genuine emotions was emerging. ‘You know perfectly well that the camera lies and lies and lies. You seem to think it’s the duty of TV to pander to all the worst impulses of your audience. That they need to feed on the weaknesses of their fellow men and women to feel comfortable with themselves.’
‘You seem to have a higher opinion of your “fellow men and women”…’ he repeated her words with a sarcastic twist, ‘… than I do. But perhaps you lack my experience of the common man.’ His eyes narrowed, his self-importance was back. ‘Though how you can keep pulling pints for the sort of customer you get in here without wanting to hit them over the head for the petty-mindedness, bigotry, and basic ignorance they display every time they open their mouths, I find it hard to understand. I seem to have been giving you credit for more intelligence than you obviously have.’
‘I’ll hit you over the head if you aren’t careful.’ Amy picked up an empty tray and shoved it at him. ‘Now pick up the remaining dirty glasses. It’s all due to you and Stan that there are so many. Or is doing something useful beneath your dignity?’
He actually flushed, and after a moment started to move around the now almost deserted bar collecting empties.
‘Just as well Stan has gone,’ he said ruefully. ‘He’d give a day’s wages – and they’re no mean sum – to capture me doing this.’
‘You know,’ said Amy, clearing tables behind him, ‘that’s what your programme needs, a touch of realism.’
Ben worked in silence for a couple of minutes. Then, ‘What’s he really like, your boss? He doesn’t seem your usual sort of landlord.’
‘And what does that mean? How much experience of pub landlords do you have?’
‘Well…’ he made a vague gesture with a pint tankard. ‘They’re either sharp-eyed management types, keen to build up the business so they can sell on at a massive profit, or chaps with dreams in their eyes who’ve always yearned to run a pub, but without a clue what it entails. Your Admiral I’d put in the second category… except he’s had the nous to get someone like you to keep the ship from sinking.’
Despite her doubts about Ben Milne’s sincerity, Amy couldn’t help warming towards him ever so slightly.
‘How long have you been here?’
She had to think for a moment. ‘Just over three years.’
‘So you must have got to know the Admiral pretty well.’
‘He’s a very nice old boy.’
‘Is that all?’
She put the full tray on the bar, picked up a cloth and started wiping down tables.
‘What about family?’
‘His? There isn’t any.’
‘None at all? Did he fall out with them?’
‘We don’t all come provided with a full set of parents, brothers and sisters, cousins and aunts.’
Ben had given up collecting empties, instead he’d taken up position on one of the bar stools and was fiddling with a smartphone. Amy was certain, though, that his attention was on the answers to his seemingly idle questions.
He looked up. ‘Which are you missing from that cast list?’
She continued wiping down tables.
‘Parents still alive?’
‘Ben, shouldn’t you be renewing your relationship with Ianthe?’
‘Ianthe who?’
‘The over-the-top blonde who draped herself all over you earlier this evening.’
‘Oh, her! I was hoping you could tell me who she was.’
‘You mean, you weren’t at uni with her?’
‘Amy, Amy, how could you! Do I look her age?’ Ben suddenly paused and his expression changed. ‘She could, I suppose, have been a mature student? There is something familiar about her…’ He rubbed his chin in the manner of one who has had to change his mind about something, and Amy thought he looked guilty enough to have remembered being in bed with her. Surely not! Still, she paused for a moment in her task of putting chairs upside down on the tables so she could sweep the floor. No edge-to-edge carpeting at the Admiral Byng. Her head on one side, she considered Mr Ben Milne. ‘In a way you look, well, sort of ageless.’
‘Thank you very much.’ He obviously did not consider this a compliment. ‘Have I got bags under the eyes, frown lines, lips that have disappeared?’
‘Mr Milne, you can’t be as self-obsessed as that comment makes you sound!’
‘If we were in a novel, at this point I’d give a rueful laugh. Consider it laughed. You’re right, of course. I am your average simple male who hates the fact that the years are slipping by and he can’t kick a football as far as he used to.’
She gave him a closer look. If you reckoned that Ianthe had aged beyond her years, and that he had managed to off-load his excesses on a portrait in the attic, maybe, just maybe, they had been at uni together.
‘You, on the other hand, have been on the go all the evening, and look as though you are good for a marathon.’
‘So what