Chapter IV

One day my English lessons ceased abruptly. The weather was getting hot and one of my pupils, feeling too lazy to go on with his lessons, dismissed me. The other disappeared from his lodgings without notice, owing me twelve pounds. I was left with only thirty pence and no tobacco. For a day and a half I had nothing to eat or smoke, and then, too hungry to put it off any longer, I packed my remaining clothes into my suitcase and took them to the pawnshop. This put an end to all pretence of being in funds, for I could not take my clothes out of the hotel without asking Madame Mardell's leave. I remember, however, how surprised she was at my asking her instead of removing the clothes on the sly, shooting the moon being a common trick in our quarter.

It was the first time that I had been in a Cash Converters. One went through grandiose plastic portals (marked, of course, ‘The best place to sell, the better place to buy' they write that even over the Beeston branch) into a large, bare room like a school classroom, with a counter and rows of benches. Forty or fifty people were waiting. One handed one's pledge over the counter and sat down. Presently, when the clerk had assessed its value he would call out, 'Number such and such, will you take fifty pounds?' Sometimes it was only fifteen pounds, or ten, or five -- whatever it was, the whole room knew it. As I came in the clerk called with an air of offence, 'Number 83--here!' and gave a little whistle and a beckon, as though calling a dog. Number 83 stepped to the counter; he was an old bearded man, with an overcoat buttoned up at the neck and frayed trouser-ends. Without a word the clerk shot the bundle across the counter -- evidently it was worth nothing. It fell to the ground and came open, displaying four pairs of men's woollen pants. No one could help laughing. Poor Number 83 gathered up his pants and shambled out, muttering to himself.

The clothes I was selling, together with the suitcase, had cost over twenty pounds, and were in good condition. I thought they must be worth ten pounds, and a quarter of this (one expects quarter value at a Cash Converters) was a ten pack of Marlboro lights. I waited without anxiety, expecting five pounds at the worst.

At last the clerk called my number: 'Number 97!'

'Yes,' I said, standing up.

'Seventy pence?'

Seventy pence for ten pounds' worth of clothes! But it was no use arguing; I had seen someone else attempt to argue, and the clerk had instantly refused the pledge. I took the money and the ticket and walked out. I had now no clothes except what I stood up in--the coat badly out at the elbow--an overcoat, moderately pawnable, and one spare shirt. Afterwards, when it was too late, I learned that it was wiser to go to a Cash Converters in the afternoon. The clerks are young, and, like most young people, are in a bad temper till they have eaten their lunch.

When I got home, Madame Mardell was sweeping the floor. She came up the steps to meet me. I could see in her eye that she was uneasy about my rent.

'Well,' she said, 'what did you get for your clothes? Not much, eh?'

'Two hundred pounds,' I said promptly.

‘Wow' she said, surprised; 'well, THAT'S not bad. How expensive those TK Maxx clothes must be!'

The lie saved a lot of trouble, and, strangely enough, it came true. A few days later I did receive exactly two hundred pounds due to me for a newspaper article, and, though it hurt to do it, I at once paid every penny of it in rent. So, though I came near to starving in the following weeks, I was hardly ever without a roof.

It was now absolutely necessary to find work, and I remembered a friend of mine, a Russian artist named Boris, who might be able to help me. I had first met him in the public ward of the Queen’s Medical Centre, where he was being treated for bipolar disorder. He had told me to come to him if I were ever in difficulties.

I must say something about Boris, for he was a curious character and my close friend for a long time. He was a big, artistic man of about thirty-five, and had been good looking, but since his depression he had grown immensely fat from lying in bed. Like most artists, he had had an adventurous life. His parents, who owned Revolution Vodka bar, had been rich people, and he had served in the bar as a cocktail shaker, which, according to him, was the best job in all of Hockley.

After the bar went bankrupt in the late nineties he had first worked in a brush factory in Loughborough, then as a porter at the Holiday Inn, then had become a dishwasher, and had finally worked his way up to be a waiter. When he fell ill he was at Harts Hotel, and taking a hundred pounds a day in tips. His ambition was to become a MAITRE D'HOTEL, save fifty thousand pounds, and set up a small, select restaurant on the Embankment.

Boris always talked of the bar as the happiest time of his life. Art and drinking were his passion; he had read innumerable books about philosophy and art history, and could tell you all about the theories of Nietchze, Kunst, Descartes, Barthes and Foucault. Anything to do with artists pleased him. His favourite cafe was Lee Rosie’s Tea Shop, simply because a lot of artists stand outside it. Later on, Boris and I sometimes went to the Angel Row together. If we went by tram, Boris always got out at the Royal Centre instead of Old Market Square, though Old Market Square was nearer; he liked the association with the Theatre Royal who had recently shown Scooby Doo: The Musical, and answered simply, 'Shit!'

The only things left to Boris by the Revolution Vodka Bar were his medals and some photographs of his old cocktail shaking days; he had kept these when everything else went to Cash Converters. Almost every day he would spread the photographs out on the bed and talk about them:

'There my friend. There you see me at the head of the bar. Fine big men, eh? Not like these little barmen at Broadway. A cocktail shaker at twenty-- not bad, eh? Yes, a cocktail shaker in the Revolution; and my father was the landlord.

'Ah but my friend, the ups and downs of life! A cocktail shaker in the best bar in Nottingham, and then, piff! the Revolution -- every penny gone. In 1996 I stayed a week at Comfort Hotel because it was so near to work; in 2000 I was trying for a job as night watchman there. I have been night watchman, cellarman, floor scrubber, dishwasher, porter, lavatory attendant. I have tipped waiters, and I have been tipped by waiters.

'Ah, but I have known what it is to live like a gentleman, my friend. I do not say it to boast, but the other day I was trying to compute how many mistresses I have had in my life, and I made it out to be over two hundred. Yes, at least two hundred... Ah, well, what goes around comes around. Victory is to him who
fights the longest. Courage!' etc. etc.

Boris had a queer, changeable nature. He always wished himself back in the arts, but he had also been a waiter long enough to acquire the waiter's outlook. Though he had never saved more than a few thousand pounds, he took it for granted that in the end he would be able to set up his own restaurant and grow rich. All waiters, I afterwards found, talk and think of this; it is what reconciles them to being waiters. Boris used to talk interestingly about Hotel life:

'Waiting is a gamble,' he used to say; 'you may die poor, you may make your fortune in a year. You are not paid wages, you depend on tips — ten per cent of the bill, and a commission from the wine companies on champagne corks. Sometimes the tips are enormous. The barman at World Service, for instance, makes five hundred pounds a day. More than five hundred, in the season... I have made two hundred pounds a day myself. It was at a Hotel in the Lace Market, in the season. The whole staff, from the manager down to potwashers, was working twenty-one hours a day. Twenty-one hours' work and two and a half hours in bed, for a month on end. Still, it was worth it, at two hundred pounds a day.

'You never know when a stroke of luck is coming. Once when I was at Harts an employee of the Arts Council sent for me before dinner and ordered twenty-four brandy cocktails. I brought them all together on a tray, in twenty-four glasses. "Now, waiter," said the customer (he was drunk), "I'll drink twelve and you'll drink twelve, and if you can walk to the door. Afterwards you get a hundred pounds. "I walked to the door, and he gave me a hundred pounds. And every night for six days he did the same thing; twelve brandy cocktails, then a hundred pounds. A few months later I heard he had been sacked by the Arts Council for embezzlement. There is something fine, do you not think, about the Arts Council?'

I liked Boris, and we had interesting times together, playing chess and talking about art and Hotels. Boris used often to suggest that I should become a waiter. 'The life would suit you,' he used to say; 'when you are in work, with a hundred pounds a day and a nice mistress, it's not bad. You say you go in for writing. Writing is bosh. There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter. But you would make a good waiter if you shaved that moustache off. You are tall and you speak English--those are the chief things a waiter needs. Wait till I can bend this accursed leg, my friend. And then, if you are ever out of a job, come to me.'

Now that I was short of my rent, and getting hungry, I remembered Boris's promise, and decided to look him up at once. I did not hope to become a waiter so easily as he had promised, but of course I knew how to scrub dishes, and no doubt he could get me a job in the kitchen. He had said that dishwashing jobs were to be had for the asking during the summer. It was a great relief to remember that I had after all one influential friend to fall back on.