The Shelf

Part One - Christian

    'Are we done here Boys?' said Ollie, loostening his belt with an audible "clack" and spreading out his gangly prehensile legs. He inhaled slowly and then released the air with a heavy sigh as if he had exhausted himself through eating. 'I say we move onto a bar and drink ourselves into oblivion.'
    Oblivion. It sounded like the most beautiful place a human could possibly visit, but dangerous and perhaps resulting in some pain or sickness. 'Not for me,' said Christian with a defiant shake of the head. 'It sounds so tempting but I should be getting back to the office - work to do and all that.'
    Rupert raised a limp index finger to attract one of the waiting staff. 'I'm going to finish with a small something to cleanse the palate,' he said, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a hard white napkin, 'the taste of rabbit lingers on the tongue, it calls for something strong to burn it off. You'll join me I'm sure, since I am paying and I want this to be a proper jolly before we break for the holidays.'
    Lunchtime was bustling at The Jellied Eel Brasserie, a shiny new restaurant in The
City. It claimed to serve "traditional cockney fare" but it was a world away from the food vendors of Old London Town who dished out hard eels and anonymous pies to a queue of itchy customers with groaning innards. Hanging on the restaurant wall was an oversized photograph of the head chef standing proud in his whites with blanched teeth and a clarified torso. He put his own modern twist on traditional London food by subjecting the ingredients to a series of foul ordeals and then exposing them to foreign contaminants; the steak and kidneys were hung out to dry then forced to share their small pastry cell with smug little puy lentils, the eels were caught in their youth, traumatised and then dropped into Pernod where they languished until pickled, the parsley liquor was fraudalent (having been prepared with tarragon), and the pigs trotters rested on a bed of brutalised herbs only to be revived on hot-plate by a shower of savage wasabi sleet. These fancy quirks were well documented on the menu and to the target customer they made the extortionate prices unworthy of a second thought.
    The clientelle were mostly employed in the local streets. They needed complicated food, they were worthy of it; the way they saw themselves was as twisted as the food on the menu. And the money in their bank accounts was twisted too, it made twisted journeys, swimming against the tide, meandering here and there, over and under, clean, then dirty, then clean again. It left their wallets kinked and they derived a sort of twisted satisfaction from paying over the odds for anointed eels and embroidered offal.

The restaurant employed a crew of fresh green waiting staff, clean and housetrained in starched aprons, keen and obliging under the duress of the minimum wage. Their existence in London was dependent upon the gathering of tips. Rupert soon caught the attention of a thick-limbed young waiter with glistening, gelled back hair and dithering jowls. He lifted his head high, as if he been told to do so, and stomped heavily across the room, causing the floorboards to shake and the glasses inside the dumb-waiter to emit little musical tings as they rubbed together.
      'Can I help you Sir?' he blurted in a voice which sounded like it had popped out a pressurised container.
     'What is you finest and most expensive Brandy?' Rupert asked through dark red lips which shone unnattractively.
    Christian was regularly perturbed by the dark pigmentation of his colleague's mouth, which seemed to contrast so strongly with the pale, sickly hues of the surrounding skin. The waiter looked up at the chandelier and shuffled on his feet a little.
    'Well whatever it is I'll have a double, actually make that three, and hurry will you.' he said dismissively.
    'Oh and inflate the price a little, he's bloody overpaid this one!' Ollie said pointing at his colleague. He followed this brazen comment with a firm slap on the table top and a gust of raucous laughter. The poor bemused waiter paused for a few seconds looking perplexed then marched off causing those glasses to shake once again and creep perilously close to the edge of their shelf on the dumb waiter.
    'Ollie! Don't upset the waiters!' Christian said in a low voice.
    'Oh what of it? We've eaten our food, we're done, no evil can come of it.'    
    'The staff in here have zero product knowledge,' Rupert muttered to himself while studying the drinks menu, 'Father would kill me if he knew I was taking lunch in places like this. It's not a chain is it?' he said, glancing up with a grimmaced expression.
    'No, I don't think so,' said Christian, 'not yet anyway.'
    'Well that's something I suppose. High street canteens, that's what Father calls them. Christ! The glove compartment of his Bentley is better stocked for drinks than this place. I really should have been more organised and booked somewhere decent, or even better got the PA to do it. That's what she's for isn't it, that kind of thing? I really must get into the habit of using her; it's funny but she seems to go out of her way to ignore me. She does know who I am doesn't she?'
    'Erm - I'll remind her,' said Christian.