Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

here Bob gambled with human psychology. He risked getting nothing (few people know how often waiters get nothing when there are no coppers to hand) and it lay with him to make lightning interpretations of situation and character – to divine on what occasions it was worth the risk. In the case of a well-disposed or slightly intoxicated customer, it was obviously worth the risk: the same thing applied to any young man on not too familiar terms with the young woman accompanying him.The first would not care, the second would not dare, to leave the waiter nothing. But it was up to Bob to gauge with precision how well disposed the customer was or how familiar the young man with the young woman. It was also up to him to keep a perpetual supply of coppers, sixpences, and shillings readily available in separate pockets. For besides the one just mentioned, there were infinite other subtle combinations of change in relation to character and situation, all of which depended upon a smooth-working supply. He tormented Ella with his pleas for different coins.
    Like most waiters Bob had an unmistakable, unhesitating, and carefully cultivated style, wherewith to uphold his dignity. In his case it centred around his tray. Bob without his tray would have been like an excitable writer without dashes – he would hardly have been able to carry on. On going up to any table he held his tray lightly in the fingers of both hands, and, balancing it perpendicularly upon the table, said either ‘Yessir’ or ‘Goodeveningsir’ according to the case. In resting the tray thus upon the table he was able to achieve a minute bow. Without the tray he could not have bowed, would not have known what to do with his hands, and could only have stood there looking limp and inadequate. Similarly, in the indecisive conversation which invariably followed amongst those he served, the tray was a barrier, a counter, a thing behind which he could resolutely stand and wait, deferent and official.
    He now employed these tactics with his first couple in the lounge. He took their order, returned to the bar, and repeated it briskly to Ella. She put the drinks on his tray; he paid her; went back, and achieved twopence. Two other couples entered almost at once. ‘The Midnight Bell,’ once started, seemed to gather force from its own impetus, and in the next half hour he served over a dozen tables.
    By this time, too, the bar itself was filling, and Ella also was very busy. She was, however, in spite of this, in conversation with a young man in plus fours. That is to say, there was a young man in plus fours at one end of the bar to whom Ella, after each fitful and furious outburst of energy, would return.When she returned she would continue the conversation where it had been left off. But if she had forgotten the previous conversation she would all the same return to the young man, face him, with one elbow on the bar, and look about her and hum quietly to herself until they could think of something else to talk about. The young man would sometimes hum as well. The young man, in fact, was temporarily hers; and it was a case of the young man and herself against the bar. Her work was merely parenthetic in this amiable and slightly diffident relationship.
    Ella, at this phase of the evening, was seldom without someone to come back and hum to; and Bob also, at this time, generally had a friend during lulls. Already to-night he was himself in conversation with a young man of his own. This young man was connected with motors in Great Portland Street, and came into ‘The Midnight Bell’ every other night. He had much in common with Bob, and he always bought him a drink at the bar. Bob returned to him in the same way as Ella returned to her own young man, though, having a stronger personality, he did not have to hum when the conversation ran dry. Bob was never quite sure as to whether he was allowed to accept drinks from customers in this way, but it was always being done. He was