“So these are the amazing people who share your views on hamburgers?” This from my daughter Elizabeth.
Hamburgers represent the meagre heights of my culinary achievement and I have strong views on the subject. It saddens me to see people put lettuce, mayonnaise and slices of raw tomato on a hot beef patty. They have no place there. It makes me wonder at peoples’ sanity. Grilled onions belong with a meat patty. They’re soulmates: a metaphore for wedded bliss. Add cheese and you have a sort of love triangle. Bacon and dill pickle are also allowable but nothing else.
Beth and I were outside a mock castle with a white-tile cladding. White Castle, founded in 1921, is the oldest of the hamburger chains and the business methods that White Castle was forced to develop have become native to all the fast-food chains that have followed them. Privately owned it is confined to the mid-west apart from a scattering of store-fronts in New York which would be why we had never heard of them in the Gallatin Valley. They make small square hamburgers and use only my approved ingrediants. They call them ‘sliders’ and, being small, you need to eat at least two of them which has become something of a habit with me.
I should explain what brought me to Kansas. I had a never-again price offered for the business that had kept me in Montana. My wife died a few years back and our only child Elizabeth had married and moved down this way. I now have two grandsons, three year old twins. We have no family up there. I suppose those Montana winters also had a lot to do with my move. I have been staying with Beth and her husband Walt until I get myself established here and have been acting as nanny to the boys when they are not in pre-school. Walt and Beth run a Store Security Consultancy and are normally away during the day.
But then Beth insisted on coming to White Castle with me today and bringing the boys. Why, she wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t be game to take even one three year old to a restaurant and definitely not one like these two. Beth and I had sliders and coffee while the boys ate fish nibblers, shared a coke and made their usual mess. Beth was unusually quiet for some time but finally she said, “I approve Dad. She’s really nice. You’ve made a good choice.” And I said “WHAT?!”
“Your lady friend Jocelyn. No-one can replace Mom but I think I will come to love her almost as much.” She’d have got the name from the board that says ‘Duty Manager’ and has ‘Jocelyn Farquhar’ slotted in for this shift.
“And when have I ever expressed an interest in a woman or even hinted at the idea of remarrying?”
“You don’t have to Dad. I know you.” And of course she was right.
“O.K. I admit it. It probably sounds silly but I come here just to see her although I’ve never really had a chance to speak to her. She only comes out front if there’s a problem. She has a lovely way with customers and she’s a real shepherd to her shift. Nothing uppity about her. But I can see no way to meet her and you know my lack of confidence with women. She might as well be locked in a display case. And it would be just my luck to find out that she’s already married.”
“She was married Dad but she’s widowed—and welcomes your interest—but she’s old fashioned enough to believe that it’s for the man to make the first move.”
“Yes!—But how Beth?”
It might be wondered how Beth could know this on seeing Jocelyn for the first time, and then at a distance, but I didn’t question it. Beth reads people in ways that I do not understand. In the Sherlock Holmes stories Conan-Doyle has Holmes give people a detailed description of their life at their first meeting. This wasn’t a literary invention.Conan-Doyle had a friend—a Doctor Bell if I remember rightly—who could do exactly what Holmes was made to do. He was drawing from life but I suspect that Beth goes way beyond this. I long ago gave up asking her how she knows the things she knows.
“Dad! You saw the way your lady came out to help that new girl when she cleaned those tables over there. She didn’t have to. That’s not her job. She was sussing me out. Am I your daughter and if so what am I like? If she gets you she will have to take me as part of the package. And would she be able to accept these grubby little monsters as her grandsons? Actually—she’s decided yes—a very definite yes.”
“Well!” Surely it’s fair enough for her to be sussing you out while you’re sussing her out?”
“And we’re only doing what you’ve been doing Dad. You’ve been reading the unwitting testimonials—the body language of the people close to her—and I agree with your conclusion and theirs. She IS something special.”
“But not mine—and probably never will be——knowing me.”
“Don’t be too sure of that Dad. There are other people involved here. Didn’t you feel the rise in tension as we walked through the door—or at least when you walked in.—In a place like this where every day is the clone of every other day that’s gone before, what they see happening between you and their princess is high drama. They love her—feel that she belongs to them—and if you are what she wants and the two of you can’t find a way to get together—and that pretty soon—you can be sure that they’ll find their own way to make it happen.—Just keep coming Dad.”