The Miracle Man Read Online Free Page A

and in the off-season were frequently the only people who were dining, two tables were set and always the same ones, Mr Pointerly’s beside the huge black sideboard with its cabinet full of grubby glassware, and the Garrisons’ in the middle of the room. All three of them sat, heads slightly bowed, silently awaiting their sentence. For, what would it be this evening? Tasteless fish in a watery white sauce, accompanied by lumpy mashed potatoes and peas which, fired from a gun, would have brought down a rabbit at fifty yards? More of that tough beef, so rare that, as another guest had remarked, a good vet could have got it back on its feet? Or the now famous curry made from unspecified meat – the chimera curry, Mr Pointerly had called it – so vicious and glutinous that it could have been used as rat poison and was certainly instrumental in depleting the hotel’s stock of stiff and shiny Bronco toilet rolls. With every swing of the pendulum on the old grandfather clock, the gloomy mood of the room deepened.
    From the direction of the kitchen came the ominous squeak of Mrs Megarrity’s tea-trolley and in a moment she appeared in the doorway, bent low and with arms straight out in front of her as if pushing a load of boulders up a steep incline, instead of the three bowls of soup which wobbled on the trolley’s topshelf. One leg of the trolley was badly askew and every few inches gave a judder which threw the vehicle sideways and brought a mumbled oath from the Winter Cook as she fought to bring it back on course. At last she came to a shuddering halt between the two tables, the soup dribbling from the bowls. She drew herself up to the full five feet two of her height. As usual, she had made an effort to dress for her secondary role as waitress, with a little white waitress’s hat, frilled but starchless, jammed on the front of her head and drooping over one eyebrow, and a crumpled white apron to match, worn over a black skirt that was a veritable menu, a sampler of all the meals cooked since she had last changed it a fortnight before. The cuffs of the black polo-neck jumper she wore had been turned back three or four times to fit her short arms and now hung like tyre inner tubes on her wrists, wobbling back and forth at every movement.
    “Jasus tonight!” she breathed, her great chest heaving. “If I’ve got to put up with this thing one more day, I’ll throw it in the tide – an’ him along with it.” As though it were McAllister himself, she kicked the bad leg of the tea-trolley and sent more soup slopping onto the top shelf. Mr Pointerly peered hopefully into the soup bowls. With a bit of luck, she might spill it all. On Margaret Garrison’s face a kind of restrained anguish was in evidence as she stared straight ahead.
    “God alone knows why I stay in this place,” Mrs Megarrity was saying as she shoved a bowl onto the table in front of Mr Pointerly, driving more of the soup over the edge and onto the table-cloth.
    “You’re – not thinking of leaving us, Mrs Megarrity?” There was a quiver of hope in the old man’s voice.
    “And where would the likes of me find another job around here?” she demanded of him. “Tell me that, Mr Pointerly.”
    “Well,” he said, hastily taking up his spoon, “I only meant that perhaps . . . ”
    Mrs Megarrity swept the remaining bowls from the trolley and planted them in front of the Misses Garrison.
    “Ye slave your backside off for pittance wages,” the Winter Cook was saying. “Cook, waitress, toilet attendant, jack of all bloody trades – and what thanks d’ye get for it?” She stuck her face near that of the elder Miss Garrison. “I’ll tell ye. Damn all, that’s what. The amount of work I have to do, he must think I’m twins. Get that down ye before it gets cold.” Turning away, she laid hands on the trolley as if about to give it the thrashing it had so long deserved and wildly swung it around to face the kitchen, the momentum almost throwing