Driving Jarvis Ham

I’d driven down this particular road hundreds of times. I could take the curves and corners at speed, like a rally driver. I knew where the really narrow parts of the road widened slightly in case I needed to pull in to let an approaching vehicle pass. I could drive with my eyes closed. I could take my hands off the wheel and let my mind do the steering. Sleep-drive: navigating by driving over the cat’s eyes and potholes. My car could read Braille; it’s these new tyres. At the moment I was stuck behind a tractor.

I waited for the road to widen so I could overtake. I watched blades of straw rain softly down from the back of the tractor’s trailer onto my windscreen. I heard Jarvis, sensing the car’s drop in speed, shifting restlessly in his sleep in the back seat. I was really hoping to get as far into the journey as possible without him waking up. In many ways I was like a new and exhausted parent transporting an insomniac newborn baby. Don’t wake up, don’t wake up.

I looked at the petrol gauge. The needle was practically on the E. Why hadn’t I filled up before I left? I tapped the gauge with my fingertip but it didn’t move. I rocked side to side in my seat hoping that might shift the petrol about in the tank and give me a few more miles. The needle stayed on the E. I was going to have to stop for fuel. Arse candle. If I stopped at a garage Jarvis would definitely wake up. Balls.

The tractor turned off and I overtook. The tractor’s driver waved as I passed. I waved back. I didn’t know him. This is Devon.

The nearest petrol station was next to a closed down Mister Breakfast. The rusty sign was still there outside the boarded up roadside restaurant. With its picture of a cartoon chef in a wife-beater string vest, a knife in one hand and a fork stabbed through a sausage in the other, welcoming passing hungry drivers in with his toothy grin. Mister Breakfast had a big droopy moustache and a chef’s hat. He looked a bit like the Swedish chef from the Muppet Show. Someone had spray painted the word ‘cock’ on his hat.

As I pulled into the petrol station next door to the closed down restaurant, I felt – what does nostalgia feel like? – I don’t think it was nostalgia.

JANUARY 16th 1991

Today was my first day working at Mister Breakfast. I had to show customers to their tables, take their orders and bring them their meals. I’ve done this all before of course at the H and HTH (the Ham and Hams Teahouse, abbreviation fans). It’s what people call a busman’s holiday (I think). I also had to make the toast and I burned it three times. Geoff the chef (that is honestly Geoff’s name) said that famous people sometimes come in to eat here. Mostly rock bands. And sometimes people from the television or a whole rugby team. Imagine if Diana came in. I wouldn’t know what to do. It would be brilliant though. I wouldn’t burn her toast that’s for sure.

I worked at Mister Breakfast with Jarvis back then. It was my first ever job. The uniforms looked ridiculous. That’s what I remember most. Stupid hats. I think we were supposed to look American. We didn’t. We had to wear a badge that said Master Breakfast – including the female members of staff – until we were mature and qualified enough to fry stuff without setting fire to Devon, and then and only then would we be allowed to call ourselves Mister Breakfasts and get a new badge. Christ, such aspirations and dreams, I’m surprised our young heads didn’t explode at the thought of it.

JANUARY 30th 1991

Geoff says because of my experience working in a teashop since I was twelve I can cook breakfasts now. It’s only frying eggs and sausages and bacon and using a microwave but standing behind the counter in the kitchen where all the customers can see you, I suppose it’s a bit like being an actor on a stage and the customers are the audience. Being a chef is like being a film star.

Yes Jarvis, a film star. That’s exactly what it’s like.

Tom Cruise in Cocktail. That’s what he was thinking of.

Jarvis liked to spin and flip the ketchup and brown sauce bottles when Geoff wasn’t looking, throwing them into the air and catching them behind his back, on the off chance Princess Diana might drop in for a Full American English or a plate of pancakes and a pot of tea and think she was being served by Tom Cruise. Jarvis had made me take a bus into Plymouth to watch Cocktail with him three times when it came out. I hated it slightly more each time.

During my time at Mister Breakfast I never got to cook anything but I did have to handle an abattoir worth of dead animals in spite of my vegetarianism and I swept the floors and cleaned the toilets. The pay was pitiful. The soft toy Mister Breakfasts I had to embarrassingly try to flog to the customers looked like they’d been won at the worst fair in the world and were probably held together with pins and asbestos and stuffed with bandages and nappies. The souvenir t-shirts with their slogan ‘I Got My Fill at Mister Breakfast’ would prove to be in particularly poor taste after what was to happen there. Maybe that would have made a better slogan: ‘Mister Breakfast – In Poor Taste’. They could have had it printed across the front of their stupid hats.

Nobody had heard of the Breakfast Killer back then, those shirts and soft toys are probably going for a fortune on Internet auction sites now. If only I’d saved a few. Oh well, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I worked at Mister Breakfast for nearly a year and in all that time neither Princess Diana nor anyone off the TV or a single recognisable rugby player ever came in to eat any of our disgusting food.

I stopped the car at one of the small petrol station’s pumps and switched off the engine.

‘Are we there yet?’

I filled the car up with petrol and went into the shop to pay. Jarvis was already there, standing by the crisps jigging from one foot to the other.

‘The toilet’s broken,’ he said.

I looked at the man behind the counter. He had his back to us as he filled a shelf with cigarettes.

‘Flooded,’ the man said without turning to face us. Even without seeing his face it was obvious the man was in a foul mood about something.

Jarvis tilted his head and looked at me like a puppy that had just eaten my homework, and even though Jarvis was in his late thirties and not my developmentally challenged son, I asked the man behind the counter, ‘Can’t he just pop in quickly?’

‘Not unless he’s got flippers and a snorkel he can’t,’ the man said before finally turning round to face us. ‘What pump number was it?’

The friendly Devon ways that freaked out visitors from London must have bypassed this petrol station. I looked through the window at the minuscule garage forecourt and its two petrol pumps. Mine was the only car there.

‘That one,’ I said, pointing at it.

‘Number one,’ the man said. ‘Forty pounds and a penny.’

Jarvis was now doing the quick march on the spot and also grabbing the front of his trousers. I gave the man behind the counter two twenty pound notes and he made a show of holding them both up to the light and examining them.

‘There’s a lot of forgeries about,’ he said and looked at me, ‘And a penny.’

I rooted around in my pockets for a bit and then gave him another twenty pound note.

‘Can I have a receipt please?’ I said.

Jarvis left the shop in a hurry as the man behind the counter slowly counted out my change in as many small denominational coins as possible.

I walked back to the car where Jarvis was still hopping from foot to foot.

‘Go in the trees,’ I said.

‘Someone might see me.’

I looked around. Apart from the fast passing cars and Devon’s grumpiest man in the garage shop there was nobody about.

‘Will you keep a look out?’ Jarvis said.

I followed him over to the trees behind the closed down Mister Breakfast and stood with my back to him as Jarvis relieved himself.

‘Remember when we worked here?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Yes you do.’

‘When?’

‘You used to spin the sauce bottles.’

‘The what bottles?’

‘The sauce bottles.’

‘I did?’

‘Yeah, like Tom Cruise.’

‘Tom Cruise?’

‘In Cocktail.’