Bobby's Girl (22 page)

They left the uniform store and walked down Main Street. A muted ‘hush' had descended over the town. The streets were crowded, but when people spoke it was in whispers, as if they were in church. The name ‘Bobby Kennedy' hung in the air. It was as though everyone was holding their breath waiting for the next news announcement.

‘People who live on the Cape consider the Kennedys as part of their family because they've summered in the Kennedy compound outside Hyannis for two generations,' Bobby explained after they passed a group of matrons, damp handkerchiefs pressed to their eyes, who were discussing the tragedy.

Neither Bobby nor Sandy mentioned their argument. She and Kate did their best to distract them by asking questions about the town. It was certainly different from anything in Britain.

A few of the restaurants sported names they'd seen in New York and off the freeway on their journey through Connecticut into Massachusetts. There'd been other ‘Frankie Frankfurters' with signs declaring that all their ‘franks' were cooked in beer, and the smell that came from Dunkin' Donuts was seductive, sugary and identical to the one next to their hotel in New York. There was the inevitable McDonald's, and when she and Kate saw Howard Johnson's, they edged towards the restaurant to check if the waitresses' uniforms were as hideous as the assistant in the uniform shop had told them.

They were worse. But what they weren't prepared for was the young woman who catapulted out of the door and ran towards them.

‘So, you Brits took my advice and found your way to the Cape.'

‘Marion?' Penny barely recognised the bunny girl as the waitress dressed in a long-skirted blue gingham dress that almost touched the floor. Marion's face was scrubbed, free from make-up, her blonde hair was screwed into a tight bun covered by a hairnet, and her lace-up white shoes, identical to the ones Penny and Kate had just bought, made her feet look enormous.

‘Marion!' A grim-faced man appeared in the doorway.

‘That's the manager. He's a real slave-driver and furious with me for leaving my station to come out here. But I couldn't let you pass without a word. Lord, what must you think of me? Every time you see me, I'm in
trouble,' she breathed headily. ‘We must get together. There's a party here every night. Come and see me and we'll set a date. I'm here six days a week.'

‘Marion!'

‘Must go.'

She ran back inside.

‘How come you two know a Southern girl who looks like an extra from
Wagon Train
?' Bobby asked.

‘She's wearing a standard Ho Jo uniform,' Sandy explained for Bobby's benefit.

‘Remind me never to eat there.'

‘Given their prices and your present situation, you can't afford to,' Sandy observed.

‘She's an escaped bunny,' Kate informed the boys.

Bobby whistled. ‘So that's the lady I have to thank for you turning down the Playboy job.'

‘She put us off,' Kate agreed.

‘We should go back to Ho Jo's, order four coffees, and leave her an enormous tip as a thank you,' Bobby suggested.

‘That would be a good idea if we had your checking account to draw on.' Sandy reminded him, yet again, that they were unemployed.

‘We've just passed Dunkin' Donuts and Frankie's. Want to go back?' Bobby asked.

‘Money and tips are better in the specialist seafood places. Last few holidays I worked for Cosmo.' Sandy frowned as he looked up the street and into the sun.

‘In the Mayflower?'

‘The ship?' she asked.

‘Doesn't exist anymore. Although I believe there are as
many splinters left of it as the true cross,' Bobby replied flippantly.

‘I thought maybe someone had built a replica and turned it into a restaurant.'

‘Now there's a business idea,' Bobby mused.

‘If we had capital, which we don't.' Sandy stopped to retie the lace on his sneakers.

‘So, if you're not referring to the ship that almost sank under the weight of immigrants from the nobility of England …' Kate was referring to all the people at the orientation party in New York who'd insisted their ancestors came over on the ship and they'd inherited a claim to a title ‘… what are you talking about?'

‘The Mayflower is a restaurant, owned by third- or possibly fourth- generation Greek immigrants. It has frontages on two different streets with a kitchen that covers both back lots in between. An upmarket frontage is in a quiet street behind Main Street. Every table has two dollars thirty cents worth of disposable fake paper linen to give the impression of luxury. The other frontage is here on Main Street, just ahead of us. It's a bar and fast-food joint. And here's Cosmo.'

‘Hey, Sandy. Saw you coming.' An enormous plump Greek with a full head of tousled black hair grabbed Sandy, lifted him off his feet and squeezed him in a bear hug. ‘Please tell me you're looking for work?'

‘I will when I get my breath back,' Sandy said when Cosmo released him. ‘You know me. I'm always looking for work when I'm on the Cape.'

‘You can have your old job back with a ten-
dollar-a-week
pay rise.'

‘You must have missed me. Short-order chef?'

‘Short-order chef,' Cosmo reiterated. ‘One twenty a week plus meals on shift, but it'll be two till ten, afternoon and evening shift. My nephew's taken the six-till-two morning shift and I've moved Leroy on the ten-till-six night shift. It's the quietest. He's slowing down and has insomnia, so it suits him on both counts.'

‘When do I start?'

‘Today. Clean chef's whites and hat in the storeroom.' Cosmo smiled at her and Kate. ‘Pretty ladies you have there. They looking for work too?'

‘They are.' Sandy winked at us. ‘Speak, girls.'

‘Like performing monkeys,' Kate mocked.

She held out her hand. ‘I'm pleased to meet you, sir. I'm Penny John.'

‘Kate Burgess.' Kate introduced herself.

‘British?' Cosmo beamed.

‘Welsh, not that Americans can tell the difference.' Penny returned Cosmo's smile. The Greek positively radiated welcoming warmth.

‘Two-till-ten shift, like Sandy. Fifty dollars a week in training, seventy afterwards, plus meals. The other girls make up to thirty dollars a shift in tips. With those looks and those accents you two should do even better. We supply aprons, you'll need uniforms.' He gazed at the length of leg they were displaying beneath their minis. ‘For the sake of the peace of mind of my male customers, but not me, with skirts.'

Sandy took the parcel from Kate. ‘Already bought.'

‘And we'll only need training in the location of
everything in the restaurant, sir,' Kate interrupted. ‘We're both silver service trained,' she lied.

‘Just what I need for outside catering jobs. We're booked solid for the summer. Can you start this afternoon?'

‘We can,' Penny and Kate assured him.

‘Anything for me, Cosmo?' Bobby asked.

‘You?' Cosmo looked at him in surprise. ‘Your grandmother would have me flogged out of town if I gave a Brosna a menial job.'

‘She's frozen my checking account.'

Cosmo laughed, a huge deep booming that shook his entire body. ‘And what sin did you commit to receive that punishment, Bobby Brosna?'

‘Annoying her,' Bobby replied evasively.

‘You should know better than to do that with a lady who controls your purse strings.'

‘I should, but didn't.'

Cosmo slapped Bobby across the shoulders. ‘I can always do with an extra kitchen hand. How are you at mixing salads and cooking vegetables, fries and rice?'

‘I've never tried but I'm a quick learner, clean and honest,' Bobby answered.

‘Kitchen hands are the lowest of the low. At the beck and call of all the chefs, even the short-order chef,' Cosmo warned with an arch look at Sandy.

‘I'll manage.'

‘It won't all be preparation and cooking. You'll be given the filthy jobs no one else wants. Scrubbing pans, unblocking sinks, taking out the trash, cleaning trash cans, and all for eighty dollars a week plus meals on
shift. Uniform provided. But like Sandy you wash your own. And you girls will have to wash your aprons as well as your own uniforms.'

‘Sandy will be getting one twenty a week,' Bobby remonstrated.

‘Sandy's an experienced short-order chef and they are as rare as gold lobsters. Kitchen hands are two a dime.' Cosmo stepped back into the restaurant and glanced at the clock above the bar. ‘If you're sure you're up for it, I'll see you guys in four hours.'

‘We'll be back sooner for a coffee if we can afford one, to see if we can pick up any tips from the rest of your staff,' Bobby said.

Cosmo dropped his smile. ‘You can have a coffee on the house but I warn you now, Bobby Brosna – as Sandy knows, when we're busy you'll be worked as you never were before.'

Cosmo wasn't exaggerating. Penny and Kate had to learn a bewildering array of locations. The clean-crockery station – the clean-cutlery station – the napkin station – the iced-water-machine and glasses station. Every potential customer to be given a free glass of iced water on arrival, even if they didn't order anything.

A novel idea for her and Kate but they'd never lived in a climate as warm and humid as the Cape in June. There was a hot drawer for bread rolls and another for cornbread. Prices were on the menus, the specials on a board, cocktail, spirit and beer prices affixed to the bar.

The ice cream station had photographs of what the house ice creams should look like when decorated with
chocolate curls, nuts, swirls of cream and pieces of fruit. Penny studied the pictures and dreaded being asked to make one.

Sandy disappeared into a small alcove off the kitchen and reappeared in chef's whites and hat behind a hatch in the fast-food restaurant. Penny watched in amazement as he began to flip burgers, eggs, bacon and chicken as though he'd been doing it all his life.

Bobby went into the kitchen and that was the last she and Kate saw of him that shift, although they heard his name being yelled intermittently by the chefs – and not politely.

She and Kate had been left in the care of a
middle-aged
waitress, who'd travelled to America as a GI bride. Betty showed them the layout of the Mayflower in between regaling them with details of her life and that of the ‘waste of space worse than useless' sergeant husband she'd walked out on after only two weeks of marriage.

‘He promised me I'd live the Hollywood high life when we were courting in Britain. But when the boat carrying the GI brides docked, he took me to a
four-roomed
New York apartment and expected me to set up home alongside his parents, grandmother, two sisters and brother.'

‘I'm amazed you stayed with him two weeks,' Kate said.

‘Took me that long to find another fellow.'

Twenty minutes after Betty had begun their ‘orientation' Penny and Kate were taking orders, ferrying food, glasses, cutlery, and serving customers.

‘This is a doddle,' Kate declared during their
twenty-minute
break at a counter in the kitchen to eat chicken burgers and fries. ‘In Ponty we had to clear our own tables. Here you have bus boys to do the dirty work, leaving us clean and free to lay up the next lot of cutlery and crockery.'

Halfway through the shift, Penny's feet didn't feel like it was a ‘doddle', and after spending twenty minutes trying to please an irritable family of six who didn't want to be pleased and complained about every dish she served them – and left no tip – she felt that waitressing was a hard, very hard, way to make a living.

It was a warm, dark, velvet night when they left the restaurant by the kitchen door. She and Kate leant against the wall in the alleyway, looked at one another and started to laugh.

‘Exhaustion, hysteria or relief at the thought of not having to take another order for sixteen hours?' Sandy appeared behind them.

‘Combination of all three,' Kate answered.

‘Want to see the result of the kitchen initiation rites?' He pushed the door wide.

Bobby was crawling out of the centre of the massive dishwasher. His hair was festooned with leftover spaghetti and meat sauce that dripped down over his forehead and nose.

Kate and Sandy started laughing. Penny held back, unsure of Bobby's reaction. She needn't have worried.

‘It's good to know my first attempt at a full day's work in the real world has amused my colleagues.' Bobby
turned back to the long table where the chefs were cutting, chopping and mixing and gave them a theatrical bow. ‘See you guys tomorrow.'

‘Your family may be filthy wealthy, Bobby Brosna, but you're a sport,' the senior chef called back.

‘May I take that comment as an accolade?'

‘You may.' The chef saluted him.

‘You're not going to drive your car like that, are you? You'll stick to the leather upholstery,' Sandy protested.

‘One moment.' Bobby returned to the kitchen and reappeared less than a minute later, clean but dripping wet. ‘There's a shower. The car upholstery will dry.' He wrapped a soggy arm around her shoulders. ‘Home, woman, for some tender loving care and comfort. I deserve it.'

‘Beer and chill in the garden,' Sandy suggested when Bobby parked the car outside the Beach House.'

‘Shower and bed,' she corrected.

‘I'm right behind you.' Bobby unlocked the door.

The trouble with you two is, you have absolutely no stamina,' Sandy declared.

‘I'll buy some with my first wages' cheque, until then I'll have to do without it.' Bobby went into their bedroom. She followed.

He closed the door. ‘Do you want first shower?'

‘You should, you're wet.'

‘We'll share.'

‘I have to wash my uniform.'

‘Buy another tomorrow.'

She was too tired to argue with the profligacy.

They went into the bathroom and climbed into the shower. They sponged one another down, rinsed off and
tumbled into bed, too exhausted for anything more than short-lived, almost perfunctory sex.

They fell asleep to the murmur of Sandy and Kate's voices. Accustomed to the long hours and hard work of restaurants, they'd taken a couple of chilled beers they'd bought from Cosmo into the garden. Neither appeared to be in a hurry to go to bed.

She woke with a start, uncertain of her surroundings. She looked around, saw the sea through the undraped window, remembered they were in Bobby's Beach House and relaxed back on the pillows. Unaccustomed to being on her feet for long hours, her leg muscles ached unbearably. The luminous hands on her travelling clock pointed to three.

She turned. Bobby's eyes were open.

He smiled. ‘You're awake?'

‘I wasn't until I dreamt someone was stalking me,' she reproached.

‘Come for a swim?'

‘It's three in the morning.'

He leant over and kissed her. ‘I hate swimming alone.'

‘We have to be in work …'

‘In eleven hours. Swim for one to cool down in this damned heat and back to sleep for the regulation eight, then breakfast and work.' He left the bed and pulled on his shorts. ‘I'd forgotten how much I love the Cape. But this house desperately needs air conditioning. When I'm talking to my grandmother again I must ask her to put it in.'

‘You're confident you'll talk to her again?' she asked in surprise.

‘This isn't the first time she's frozen my account. But she'll come round. I'm her link to immortality – the mirror image of the only man she ever loved – my grandfather. Or so she keeps telling me. She refuses to recognise any of my father's other children – even the legitimate ones, because their mothers weren't high society enough for her. And, as she's cast my father off with somewhat more than the proverbial penny because he's no interest in the business and would squander every Brosna penny given the chance, that only leaves me.'

‘So you'll inherit the entire Brosna fortune?' That was the moment she realised that one day Bobby would be rich with wealth beyond her imaginings.

‘Unless my grandmother leaves it to a cats' home, but as she hates animals, that's not likely.'

‘I had no idea.' She slumped back into the bed and saw him in a new light. One she didn't like. He'd tracked her down, wooed and won her. But was that simply indicative of the spoilt rich kid getting his own way? Sandy had certainly dropped enough hints that she'd ignored at the time.

‘Don't hold it against me.'

She felt as though he'd read her thoughts.

‘If you'd prefer me poor, I could give the money away.'

‘You'd forgo the Brosna inheritance for me?'

‘No, but the offer sounded good, didn't it?'

‘Only until you said the word “no”.'

‘The sea's getting warmer by the minute.'

‘Can't we just lie here and look at it through the window.' She snuggled under the sheet.

‘Lazybones.'

‘That's me.'

‘I'll tickle you.' He reached for her foot.

‘I'm tired.'

‘Too tired for moonlight bathing?' He stood in front of the window and looked out. ‘It's beautiful out there. As an artist you should never turn down an opportunity to admire beauty.'

She reluctantly left the bed and opened the drawer she'd used to stow away everything that couldn't be hung in the wardrobe.

‘You don't need a bikini,' Bobby urged when he saw her rummaging through her clothes.

‘And if there's someone on the beach?'

‘Who'd be lurking on a private beach at this time of night?'

‘You own this beach!'

‘It's part of the Brosna Estate. Surely you didn't think someone else owned the beach when it's surrounded by Brosna land.'

‘I assumed the States were like the UK. No one can own a beach there. At least not between tidelines – it all belongs to the Crown and is accessible to everyone.'

‘Unless your queen takes it into her head to roll out barbed wire and fence it off.'

‘Now that's an image to conjure with.' She laughed at the idea of the royal family going out en masse from Buckingham Palace to hammer stakes into sand and roll out wire.

‘Here,' Bobby threw her one of his T-shirts. ‘If you're worried about your modesty, wear this until you're in
the water. Though why you should give a damn what I see after what we've been doing is beyond me.'

‘It's not you I'm concerned about.'

‘The seagulls should be asleep. Not too sure about the horseshoe crabs, though. They might be looking.'

She pulled on the T-shirt, which smelt of Bobby and was half a dozen sizes too large. They crept past Sandy and Kate's room, which was silent, out of the house and on to the sand.

The horseshoe crabs were moving erratically over the sand. She stopped to watch them.

‘Enormous, aren't they?' Bobby reached for her hand.

‘Gigantic compared to the ones on Welsh beaches and positively prehistoric. It doesn't take much imagination to visualise them crawling around the feet of dinosaurs.'

Stepping between them they walked hand in hand to the edge of the sea. The waves were small, and they broke softly, foam-crested rivulets dissipating into silver streaks over the sand.

Bobby pulled off his shorts, flung them behind him and raced in, diving down and swimming as soon as he was waist-deep.

Feeling strangely self-conscious, although the beach was devoid of human life just as Bobby had promised, she stripped off his T-shirt and followed him.

Penny left the house and returned to her studio. She opened the drawer she had dropped the photograph into
and retrieved it, but she didn't need an image of Bobby to recall the sensations of that night.

The silk-smooth water, the satin feel of Bobby's skin against hers as he had embraced her underwater. His firm, unyielding erection when he'd pressed his body along the length of hers. Their failed attempt to make love underwater.

Their laughter had been their downfall. If they hadn't been making so much noise they would have heard the vehicle approaching before the spotlight was switched on, embarrassing them both.

She still thought the law she and Bobby had broken that night a ridiculous one. Especially for a country that proudly hailed itself ‘the land of the free'.

Taking the photograph, she carried it back to her living room, propped it against the lamp on her desk, sat back – and remembered.

The first indication they weren't alone was a blinding white light. A metallic voice boomed through a loudspeaker.

‘Leave the sea slowly. Don't run. Keep your hands above your heads.'

‘Not bloody likely,' Bobby shouted back. ‘We're naked.'

‘Naked in a public place is a felony. And you don't sound British, so why are you using a British swear word?' the uniformed officer demanded, moving the light so it shone full on Bobby who was standing
waist-deep
in the water next to Penny.

‘Because I've been living in Britain for the last three years. And this isn't a public place. It's a private beach, I'm Bobby Brosna …'

‘I'm Doris Day and he's Charlton Heston,' the officer mocked. ‘You're American. You know it's illegal to be on a beach after six o'clock at night.'

‘This is a private beach,' Bobby repeated stubbornly.

‘There's no fence up.'

‘Because my grandmother is away …'

‘Everyone in Hyannis knows the old lady hasn't been here in years. You,' the officer motioned to Penny with his gun. ‘Hands in the air now.'

‘Turn your back,' Bobby whispered.

She did as Bobby suggested. But the disembodied voice boomed out of the darkness again. ‘Turn around. Keep your hands in the air.'

Bobby shouted, ‘My girlfriend's shy. How about I come out first and throw her the T-shirt?'

‘Here, catch.' One of the officers took pity on them and tossed them Bobby's shorts and the T-shirt she'd worn. Both landed in the sea and both were soaking wet, but keeping her back turned, she pulled on the shirt.

‘Now out, both of you.'

Bobby slipped and fell when putting on his shorts, but he didn't argue. She waded on to the sand, he crawled.

‘Hands high against the side of the vehicle. What are you doing here at this time in the morning?'

‘Swimming,' Bobby answered.

The single word earned him a cuff across the head. Terrified, she fought panic. It was Grosvenor Square all
over again, only this time there was no Uncle Haydn on hand to solve the problem. She tried to calculate how many miles away Las Vegas was.

‘We were swimming,' Bobby repeated, his voice cracked from the effects of the blow.

An overweight officer opened the back of the vehicle. ‘Inside the cage, both of you. We'll sort this in the morning.'

For the second time she found herself shivering next to Bobby in a police vehicle. Both of them were soaked, and wearing only a thin, wet T-shirt she felt naked and vulnerable.

When they reached the police station she was handed over to a female officer who body-searched her even more roughly than the policewoman had in London. When she'd finished humiliating her, she handed her a filthy, grey, greasy, nylon blanket, opened a door and walked her to a cage in the middle of a large room.

Sitting in it were two of the thinnest women she'd ever seen. The only large thing about them were their breasts, which as they were unevenly placed were obviously false. They were wearing enough make-up between them to grease a boat engine; their skirts were even shorter than Kate's and the expression on their faces a mixture of terror and misery behind the paint.

Opposite them sat a beautiful girl, dark-skinned with long black hair and dark eyes. She was holding the hand of a blue-eyed blonde boy who also looked frightened. In the furthest corner from the others a black woman cowered. Two toddlers were sleeping on her lap and she
clutched them tightly as if she was afraid they were going to be torn from her arms.

Stretched out on the floor beneath a bench was an old man. Stinking of alcohol, covered in vomit, the crutch of his pants wet, he twitched and mumbled in a drunken stupor.

The female officer waited for one of her colleagues to leave the desk in the room and open the cage. A thump between Penny's shoulder blades propelled her inside. She stumbled over the outstretched hand of the drunk and reached for the cage bars to steady herself. She slipped; the blonde boy caught her.

‘Hi, I'm Paul. You can sit next to my girlfriend, Mary, if you like,' he offered.

‘You're Irish.'

‘Guilty.'

Relief flooded through her at the sound of an accent, which if not exactly home, was familiar. She suppressed the impulse to kiss him.

‘I'm Welsh.'

He looked at her wet T-shirt visible above the dirty blanket she was reluctant to use. ‘They caught you swimming?'

‘Yes.'

‘Were you hoping to reach Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket?'

For the first time she saw humour in the situation.

‘I didn't know it was illegal to be on a beach after six o'clock at night.'

‘Strange law. But perhaps they want to leave the sands free for leprechauns and witches to dance on.'

‘Shut up,' the officer behind the desk bellowed.

The door opened. Bobby stumbled in escorted by two of the officers who'd taken them into custody. He was wearing his boxer shorts and carrying an identical but even dirtier blanket than the one they'd given her. One of his eyes was swollen and there was blood on his mouth.

He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘This is getting to be a habit.'

Mary moved along the bench to make room and Bobby sat next to her on the wooden bench. He reached for her hand.

‘Look on the sunny side, Pen. At least this time we're together.'