A bright young waiter-man met us at the entrance. “Two, miss?” he says. “Not much room at the moment, I’m afraid. This way.” He gave us both menus and Nick promptly dropped his. This alerted the waiter-man to Nick’s condition. He peered at Nick’s face. Then he retrieved the menu and gave it to me, looking Nick in the face again in a sort of hushed, respectful way, as if he thought Nick might be dead. He led the way past tables where most of the fat people were already eating, and quite a few of the shy middle-aged ladies too – you could see these ladies had been trained all their lives to eat breakfast punctually at eight – and over to a table near the window. It was the only semi-empty table in the room.
I don’t believe this! I thought.
The Prat Venables was sitting at one end of it reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. He twitched the paper aside as I sat Nick down, saw it was us, and put it up again like a shield. Too bad. I got on with ordering us both breakfast.
“To start?” says the waiter-man, pad poised.
“Ner – yah!” said Nick.
“He means not yoghurt,” I said. “Cornflakes for both of us, please. And to follow—”
“Ner – bah – bah – ez – bay!” Nick stated.
“He doesn’t like beans, but he does like eggs and bacon,” I translated.
“How about sausages, tomatoes or mushrooms?” the waiter asked courteously. I swear he was experimenting to see what noise Nick would make for these. Nor was he disappointed.
“M’sha, m’sha, m’sha,” Nick went.
“Mushrooms, but he doesn’t want sausages,” I explained. “He wants tomatoes. Fried bread, Nick? Toast?”
“N’fee,” said Nick.
“He says toast but not fried bread,” says I. “To drink—”
“WOOORF – EEF!” Nick proclaimed.
“Yes, we want the biggest pot of coffee you’ve got,” I explained hastily. “It’s urgent. His mind’s working perfectly, you see, but he can’t see or speak properly until he’s had at least four cups of coffee.”
The waiter peered respectfully at Nick’s face once more. Nick’s eyes were still shut and sort of bloated. “And for you, miss?”
“The same,” I said.
He wrote it all down and whizzed off, whereupon Nick blared, “M’feeyert.”
“Oh God,” I said and raised the table cloth to look at his feet.
“M’bertowswash!” Nick wailed.
“It’s all right, you fool,” I said. “You’ve got your shoes on the wrong feet again, that’s all.” I got down under the table and changed his shoes over. As I went to my knees, I thought I heard newspaper crackle. When I backed out from among the chairs and got the cloth off my head, I caught a glimpse of a gold-rimmed lens hastily retreating behind the Telegraph again. The Prat, like the waiter, was fascinated, but pretending not to be.
I’d just got sat down again when the waiter dashed back with a coffee-pot half the size of a gasometer and poured some of it out for both of us, with reverent curiosity. “Milk, miss?”
“Thanks,” I said. “No, he’ll have the first four cups black.”
The waiter stood and watched and poured and watched while Nick drained the necessary four cups, still without opening his eyes. The newspaper in front of the Prat noticeably shifted so that he could watch too.
The waiter had obviously spread the news of Nick to the rest of the staff. A waitress arrived with cornflakes for both of us. She and the waiter, and the Prat (with a corner of his newspaper bent back for the purpose), all watched fascinated while Nick ate a whole bowlful and absorbed two more cups of coffee without looking at any of it. His eyes were open in slits by then, but he was still at the state of staring ahead at nothing when another waitress rushed up with two plates of cooked breakfast. Another waiter arrived with a rack of toast, and the four of them stood there expectantly while I put a knife into one of Nick’s hands and a fork into the other and said to him, “Eat.”
Nick obeyed. They watched wonderingly while Nick somehow managed to spear a brisk slippery mushroom he couldn’t have known was there and get it into his mouth. Then they watched him cut bacon and eat that. Their eyes turned to the egg. I wondered if they had a bet on that Nick couldn’t eat an egg without spilling some of it. if so, they lost. Nick put the whole egg in his mouth at once, dangling perilously from the fork by one corner. Not a drop got away.
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Here the Prat stopped pretending he wasn’t watching. He folded his paper and asked me, “What happens if you put another plate of breakfast in front of him when he’s finished this one? Would he eat that as well without noticing?”
The waiters and waitresses looked at him gratefully. I could see they had been dying to know this too.
“Yes, he would, just like a zombie. I’ve tried,” I told them.