The Incident at Sade’s
“Shall we go to Sade’s?”
We always went to Sade’s on a Friday at teatime. And Bob always asked. Tony always groaned. The three of us were from the same department: all always overlooked for promotion; none of us ever quite sure if we minded; never really knowing if we had ambitions.
Only it wasn’t called Sade’s. It had a long name, a silly name: Antony Smart In the Park. It sounded like a kids’ book, but it was always quite popular. Antony had been the original chef, but there were hygiene problems and he was sacked. Then the council sold a strip of land, so the restaurant was outside the park. We called it Sade’s because they played her music all the time. I suspect the woman behind the bar had been a teenager in the 1980s. The first time I went I hadn’t heard Sade in about ten years. Now I heard it every Friday between five and half past six.
On this particular Friday, with Diamond Life playing in the background, there was an incident.
This family, carrying an air of 1970s fly-on-the-wall TV documentary, was attracting attention. The kids were kicking off. Two boys, one about eight and the other about twelve, were trying to sing along with Sade, but they didn’t know the words and they didn’t know the tune, and they had little understanding of appropriate volume.
They managed to get through the first course. We moved on to our second bottle earlier than usual. It was delivered with a “Your Syrah, lads.” This was a reference to an argument about Syrah or Shiraz eighteen months ago. I was feeling lordly and raised Tony and Bob’s eyebrows by sending two glasses over to the parents.
The boys started strange seated dance moves when the risotto arrived. The mum called the waiter over, the one we called Smooth Operator. She asked him for a high chair and the dad repeated the request, word for word: Can I have a high chair, please, waiter?
This confused Smooth because people didn’t usually append ‘waiter’ to the end of their sentences and he wasn’t sure if they wanted one or two chairs, nor why they wanted them. He explained his confusion, there was slightly manic laughter all round, and it was soon sorted.
Smooth brought two over, then the parents lifted the boys and stared at them. The mum – and I must admit I thought it would be the other way round – picked up the one who looked about twelve, and the dad picked up the younger one. They shoved them in the high chairs. The brothers didn’t complain, but their legs weren’t very happy: they made cries and creaks of discomfort. Their lower limbs were bending at unnatural angles. There was grazing. There was bleeding.
We continued with our quick and cheap three courses with two bottles of red, as we did every Friday. I was facing the family, but Bob and Tony didn’t turn round.
Other customers started going up and chatting to the parents, saying things like “How old are they?” “Aww, aren’t they sweet?” and patting their heads and doing that thing a bit like tickling under their chins.
We’d recently gathered at Tony’s to watch a Western re-make where the dead guys had silver dollars placed on their eyes. This was on my mind when we got up to leave.
On the way past their table I screwed up two five pound notes, put one into each of their mouths, and whispered “Don’t ever mess with Sade” in their blotchy ears. I smiled at the parents, said “Good Luck” and left.
Rob Walton is from Scunthorpe, and lives on Tyneside. Published by The Emma Press, Butcher’s Dog, Firewords Quarterly, IRON Press, Red Squirrel, Northern Voices, Arachne and others. He collated the New Hartley Memorial Pathway text. Oddness at: Welcome to lines of desire art collective!