A Twist in the Tale (8 page)

Far too
quickly, Mark was on the journey back to London, where he continued unwillingly
to hump cases up and down the hotel corridors for month after month.

Once the English
rain had
subsided
the usual influx of American
tourists began. Mark liked the Americans, who treated him as an equal and often
tipped him a shilling when others would have given him only sixpence.

But whatever
the amount Mark received Sergeant
Crann
would still
pocket it with the inevitable, “Your time will come, lad.”

One such
American for whom Mark ran around diligently every day during his fortnight’s
stay ended up presenting the boy with a ten-bob note as he left the front
entrance of the hotel.

Mark said,
“Thank you, sir,” and turned round to see Sergeant
Crann
standing in his path.

“Hand it over,”
said
Crann
as soon as the American visitor was well
out of earshot.

“I was going to
the moment I saw you,” said Mark, passing the note to his superior.

“Not thinking
of pocketing what’s rightfully mine, was you?”

“No, I wasn’t,”
said Mark. “Though God knows I earned it.”

“Your time will
come, lad,” said Sergeant
Crann
without much thought.

“Not while
someone as mean as you is in charge,” replied Mark sharply.

“What was that
you said?” asked the head porter, veering round.

“You heard me
the first time,
Sarge
.”

The clip across
the ear took Mark by surprise.

“You, lad, have
just lost your job. Nobody, but nobody, talks to me like that.” Sergeant
Crann
turned and set off smartly in the direction of the
manager’s office.

The hotel
manager, Gerald Drummond, listened to the head porter’s version of events
before asking Mark to report to his office immediately. “You
realise
I have been left with no choice but to sack you,”
were his first words once the door was closed.

Mark looked up
at the tall, elegant man in his long, black coat, white collar and black tie.
“Am I allowed to tell you what actually happened, sir?” he asked.

Mr
Drummond nodded, then listened without interruption as
Mark gave his version of what had taken place that morning, and also disclosed
the agreement he had entered into with his father. “Please let me complete my
final ten weeks,” Mark ended, “or my father will only say I haven’t kept my end
of our bargain.”

“I haven’t got
another job vacant at the moment,” protested the manager.
“Unless
you’re willing to peel potatoes for ten weeks.”

“Anything,”
said Mark.

“Then report to
the kitchen at six tomorrow morning. I’ll tell the third chef to expect you.

Only if you
think the head porter is a martin-et just
wait
until
you meet Jacques, our
maître chef de
cuisine
. He won’t clip your ear, he’ll cut it off.”

Mark didn’t
care. He felt confident that for just ten weeks he could face anything, and at
five thirty the following morning he exchanged his dark blue uniform for a
white top and blue and white check trousers before reporting for his new
duties. To his surprise the kitchen took up almost the entire base-
ment
of the hotel, and was even more of a bustle than the
lobby had been.

The third chef
put him in the corner of the kitchen, next to a mountain of potatoes, a bowl of
cold water and a sharp knife. Mark peeled through breakfast, lunch and dinner,
and fell asleep on his bed that night without even enough energy left to cross
a day off his calendar.

For the first
week he never actually saw the fabled Jacques. With seventy people working in
the kitchens Mark felt confident he could pass his whole period there without
anyone being aware of him.

Each morning at
six he would start peeling,
then
hand over the
potatoes to a gangling youth called Terry who in turn would dice or cut them
according to the third chef’s instructions for the dish of the day. Monday
sauté, Tuesday mashed, Wednesday French-fried, Thursday sliced, Friday roast,
Saturday croquette...
?ark
quickly worked out a routine
which kept him well ahead of Terry and therefore out of any trouble.

Having watched
Terry
do his job
for over a week Mark felt sure he
could have shown the young apprentice how to lighten his work-load quite
simply, but he decided to keep his mouth closed: opening it might only get him
into more trouble, and he was certain the manager wouldn’t give him a second
chance.

Mark soon
discovered that Terry always
fell
badly behind on
Tuesday’s shepherd’s pie and Thursday’s Lancashire hot-pot. From time to time
the third chef would come across to complain and he would glance over at Mark
to be sure that it wasn’t him who was holding the process up. Mark made certain
that he always had a spare tub of peeled potatoes by his side so that he
escaped censure.

It was on the
first Thursday morning in August (Lancashire hot-pot) that Terry sliced off the
top of his forefinger. Blood spurted all over the sliced potatoes and on to the
wooden table as the lad began yelling hysterically.

“Get him out of
here!” Mark heard the
maître chef de
cuisine
bellow above the noise of the kitchen as he stormed towards them.

“And you,” he
said, pointing at Mark, “clean up mess and start slicing rest of potatoes. I

‘
ave
eight hundred hungry customers
still expecting to feed.”

“Me?” said Mark
in disbelief. “But-”

“Yes, you.
You couldn’t do worse job than idiot who calls
himself trainee chef and cuts off finger.” The chef marched away, leaving Mark
to move reluctantly across to the table where Terry had been working. He felt
disinclined to argue while the calendar was there to remind him that he was
down to his last twenty-five days.

Mark set about
a task he had carried out for his mother many times. The clean, neat cuts were
delivered with a skill Terry would never learn to master. By the end of the
day, although exhausted, Mark did not feel quite as tired as he had in the
past.

At eleven that
night the
maître chef do
cuisine
threw off his hat and barged out
of the swing doors, a sign to everyone else they could also leave the kitchen
once everything that was their responsibility had been cleared up. A few
seconds later the door swung back open and the chef burst in. He stared round
the kitchen as everyone waited to see what he would do next. Having found what
he was looking for, he headed straight for Mark.

;’Oh, my God,”
thought Mark. “He’s going to “How is your name?” the chef demanded.

“Mark
Hapgood
, sir,” he managed to splutter out.

“You waste on ‘
tatoes
, Mark
Hapgood
,” said the
chef. “You start on vegetables in morning.
Report at seven.
If that cretin with half finger ever returns, put him to peeling ‘
tatoes
.”

The chef turned
on his heel even before Mark had the chance to reply. He dreaded the thought of
having to spend three weeks in the middle of the kitchens, never once out of
the
maître chef de cuisine’s
sight,
but he accepted there was no alternative.

The next
morning Mark arrived at six for fear of being late and spent an hour watching
the fresh vegetables being unloaded from Covent Garden market. The hotel’s
supply manager checked every case carefully, reject-
ing
several before he signed a chit to show the hotel had received over three
thousand pounds’ worth of vegetables. An average day, he assured Mark.

The
maître chef de cuisine
appeared a few
minutes before seven thirty, checked the menus and told Mark to score the
Brussels sprouts, trim the French beans and remove the coarse outer leaves of
the cabbages.

“But I don’t
know how,” Mark replied
hon-estly
. He could feel the
other trainees in the kitchen edging away from him.

“Then I teach
you,” roared the chef. “Perhaps only thing you learn is if hope to be good
chef, you able to do everyone’s job in kitchen, even ‘
tato
peeler’s.”

“But I’m hoping
to be a . . .” Mark began and then thought better of it. The chef seemed not to
have heard Mark as he took his place beside the new recruit. Everyone in the
kitchen stared as the chef began to show Mark the basic skills of cutting,
dicing and slicing.

“And remember
other idiot’s finger,” the chef said on completing the lesson and passing the
razor-sharp knife back to Mark.

“Yours can be
next.”

Mark started
gingerly dicing the carrots,
then
the Brussels
sprouts, removing the outer layer before cutting a firm cross in the stalk.
Next he moved on to trimming and slicing the beans. Once again he found it
fairly easy to keep ahead of the chef’s requirements.

At the end of
each day, after the head chef had left, Mark stayed on to sharpen all his
knives in preparation for the following morning, and would not leave his work
area until it was spotless.

On the sixth
day, after a curt nod from the chef, Mark
realised
he
must be doing something half right. By the following Saturday he felt he had
mastered the simple skills of vegetable preparation and found himself becoming
fascinated by what the chef himself was up to. Although Jacques rarely
addressed anyone as he marched round the acre of kitchen except to grunt his
approval or disapproval – the latter more commonly- Mark quickly learned to
anticipate his needs. Within a short space of time he began to feel that he was
part of a team - even though he was only too aware of being the novice recruit.

On the deputy
chef’s day off the following week Mark was allowed to arrange the cooked
vegetables in their bowls and spent some time making each dish look attractive
as well as edible. The chef not only noticed but actually muttered his greatest
accolade-

“
Bon
.”

During his last
three weeks at the Savoy Mark did not even look at the calendar above his bed.

One Thursday
morning a message came down from the under-manager that Mark was to report to
his office as soon as was convenient. Mark had quite forgotten that it was
August 31st- his last day. He cut ten lemons into quarters,
then
finished preparing the forty plates of thinly sliced smoked salmon that would
complete the first course for a wedding lunch. He looked with pride at his
efforts before folding up his apron and leaving to collect his papers and final
wage packet.

“Where you
think you’re going?” asked the chef, looking up.

“I’m off,” said
Mark.
“Back to Coventry.”

“See you Monday
then. You deserve day off.”

“No, I’m going
home for good,” said Mark.

The chef
stopped checking the cuts of rare beef that would make up the second course of
the wedding feast.

“Going?” he
repeated as if he didn’t understand the word.

“Yes. I’ve
finished my year and now I’m off home to work.”

“I hope you
found first-class hotel,” said the chef with genuine interest.

“I’m not going
to work in a hotel.”

“A restaurant, perhaps?”

“No, I’m going
to get a job at Triumph.”

The chef looked
puzzled for a moment, un-sure if it was his English or whether the boy was
mocking him.

“What is –
Triumph?”

“A place where they manufacture cars.”

“You will
manufacture cars?”

“Not a whole
car, but I will put the wheels on.” “You put cars on wheels?” the chef said in
disbelief.

“No,” laughed
Mark.
“Wheels on cars.”

The chef still
looked uncertain.

“So you will be
cooking for the car workers?”

“No. As I
explained, I’m going to put the wheels on the cars,” said Mark slowly,
enun-ciating
each word.

“That not
possible.”

“Oh yes it is,”
responded Mark. “And I’ve waited a whole year to prove it.”

“If I offered
you job as
commis
chef, you change mind?” asked the
chef quietly.

“Why would you
do that?”

“Because you ‘
ave
talent in those fingers. In time I think you become
chef, perhaps even good chef.”

“No, thanks.
I’m off to Coventry to join my mates.”

The head chef
shrugged.
“
Tant
pis
,” he said, and without a second glance returned to
the carcass of beef. He glanced over at the plates of smoked salmon. “A wasted
talent,” he added after the swing door had closed behind his potential protégé.

Mark locked his
room, threw the calendar in the wastepaper basket and returned to the hotel to
hand in his kitchen clothes to the housekeeper. The final action he took was to
return his room key to the under-manager.

“Your wage packet, your cards and your PAYE.
Oh, and the
chef has phoned up to say he would be happy to give you a reference,” said the
under-manager.
“Can’t pretend that happens every day.”

“Won’t need
that where I’m going,” said Mark.

“But thanks all
the same.”

He started off
for station at a brisk pace, his small battered suitcase swinging by his side,
only to find that each step took a little longer. When he arrived at Euston he
made his way to Platform 7 and began walking up and down, occasionally staring
at the great clock above the booking hall. He watched first one train and then
another pull out of the station bound for Coventry. He was aware of the station
becoming dark as shad-
ows
filtered through the glass
awning on to the public concourse. Suddenly he turned and walked offal an even
brisker pace. If he hurried he could still be back in time to help chef prepare
dinner that night.