In the Kitchen (38 page)

'Chef, something is wrong?'

'Why should it be? No, nothing. Taking an interest, that's all.'

'Padma Sheshadree Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary,' said Suleiman, drawing himself up to full height. 'In my home town of Chennai. Eleventh grade. It was decided in discussions with my father. He owns three teashops and he is very future-thinking regarding tourism in Tamil Nadu. After taking the CBSE

matriculation, I attended the Sri Balaji College of Hotel Management and Catering Technology in Trichy where I received a Diploma in Hotel Management.

It was a three-year course and equivalent to Bachelor of Science degree.

Afterwards one year spent in Switzerland for purpose of gaining international experience and also first-rate cooking skills. Eighteen months to two years to be spent in UK for gaining first-hand knowledge of large-scale operation, banqueting function, and also improving English. On return to Chennai, these skills to be put to application in first instance through senior employment opportunity in major hotel chain. Thereafter my father and his associates will make significant investment for new resort and complex, with eye to western tourist market, in location to be later decided but most likely in Kanchipuram, Kanniyakumari or Coimbatore.' He squinted anxiously at Gabriel to see if he'd passed the oral. His scarf, leavened by the heat, had fluffed up over his chin and lower lip. He tried to squash it down.

Gabe added tomato purée to the pan and leaned in to catch the rich sweet smell. 'Have you read Larousse?' he said. There was a lot he could teach this boy. 'Have you read Elizabeth David? She makes it all come alive. Read Brillat-Savarin, I recommend him. I don't know what for. Zola wrote about Les Halles and I read it when I was working in Paris and I can't remember exactly – but Zola, he's worth a look. Come to me, though, for recommendations. I can see you're serious and that's what I like about you.' He was babbling and he knew it. 'What about Balzac on gastronomy, oh yes, I was serious like you and I was always reading when I was your age. You get ideas, you see, inspiration, though mostly it's plain hard work. I read Hemingway on the subject of fried fish on the Seine.' There was a point he wanted to make. What was it? It was in his head, he could feel it pressing, but when he opened his mouth it stayed trapped and all these other words came out. 'Anyway, mustn't keep you.' He stopped talking and needlessly rattled the pan.

'I will try to procure these books,' said Suleiman. 'Which one should I start with?'

'Oh, you'll do just fine,' said Gabe. He added the veal stock. He'd use the jus for a chardonnay and leek sauce, and he had an idea to try a little fresh fennel instead of the usual mustard seeds.

He bent down to look in the fridge, deciding he'd take the first three ingredients on the top shelf as a starting point to make something surprising and fresh. When he was in Lyon they did it sometimes, the chef giving them all three items to be included and thirty minutes to come up with a new dish. The best one, if it was good enough, went on the menu for the day. It was fun, it kept all the lads competitive, and maybe he should do it tomorrow first thing when everyone arrived.

A fig, an avocado, a chilli. Gabe lined them up on a chopping board. He rubbed his hands.

Suleiman cleared his throat.

'Ah,' said Gabe, 'I thought you'd gone.'

'Should I go?' said Suleiman.

'Yes, yes. Go.'

Now, where was he? He'd thought of something good, it was forming, before Suleiman interrupted him.

What he should do was read more. He never had the time. When he worked abroad he'd lie on his bed between shifts with a book, if he couldn't get a girl.

Cookery books, of course, but all sorts of stuff too, he liked books about the Second World War, scoured from secondhand stalls back home. Food writing.

Anton – God, he hadn't thought of him in years! – Anton, in his intellectual phase, had lent him elegantly tattered volumes, which he'd inscribed 'ex-libris Anton Durlacher' on the title page with purple felt-tip pen.

Novels. Whatever was left behind in the guest rooms, ghost stories, war stories, love stories, adventures on the Nile. He'd read them and enjoy them, mostly, even the love stories, but he could never remember them by the following week so it felt like something wasted, something lost.

Charlie, now she was someone who always had a book on the go. When they went on holiday he'd sit on the beach with a popular science book, learning about quarks or atoms, and she'd lie, all carelessness and curves, across a sandy towel, saying why don't you read a novel, there's more truth in fiction than in fact.

In Lanzarote she'd made him read a book and he couldn't remember the title, couldn't recall anything about it except that it featured a conman who had a job as a liftboy in a Paris hotel. What do you think, she kept on saying, isn't it brilliant? He said he liked it but that wasn't enough. It's not just a funny story about a conman, she said. This was news to him. So tell me, what? Oh, she said, can't you see it? Like it was his fault.

Gabriel de-seeded and sliced the chilli. He tasted a tiny sliver along with a slice of fig. Yes, something could work out.

He skimmed the stock.

But what was he doing? Why was he doing this? Had he forgotten what the restaurant would be? Classic French, precisely executed. Rognons de veau dijonnaise, poussin en cocotte Bonne Femme, tripes ŕ la mode de Caen. Not dishes thrown together like a TV celebrity-chef challenge, like a trainee competition, like an anything-goes-with-chilli-and-balsamic school of cuisine.

Fuck it. God damn. He'd touched his eye. He hadn't washed his hands after slicing the chilli. Oh my God!

He gripped the worktop ledge.

How could he make such a stupid mistake?

Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't meant to be a chef.

He could have done anything. Could have been anything. Dad kept saying. You're a clever lad. Don't waste it, son. He should have stayed on at school. Should have gone to college, to university. Everything done and not done to spite his dad.

Jesus. Oh, Christ. He tried to rinse his eye at the sink, managed to make it worse because he still hadn't washed his hands. His hands. Wash his hands!

He soaped them carefully. His eyeball fit to burst, the pain drilling back in his brain.

Anyway, it wasn't true. He loved cooking. When you love something ...

Nothing comes down to a day, to a moment. Life doesn't dangle by a thread.

He'd sided with Mum. That was natural, the way Dad treated her.

He dried his hands.

The pain was exquisite. Jesus. He'd had a shard of glass in his eyeball once, bounced up from a shattered plate, and that was less painful. If he had to choose – glass or chilli – he'd choose the glass.

She was wonderful. Dad never appreciated her. Even if she was ill that was no reason, no excuse. It was always an adventure being in her world. Running back from school to Astley Street, falling through the door into another dimension, never knowing what he'd find. One time he'd discovered her in the bedroom in a crinoline and she'd ragged her hair. Gave her a pincushion, knew she'd love it, a daisy in the middle, her favourite flower. They danced in the kitchen to anything that came on the radio, Val Doonican, the Beatles, the Stones. She'd whirled and whirled him until he was giddy. She could be over the top sometimes. You never knew with Mum which way it was going to go. It was a bit of a relief, probably, when Dad and Jen got home. He'd made his own bed.

What angered him, really angered him, was how other people, less talented, had got ahead.

He was forty-two.

Other people got lucky breaks, they married money, they sold their souls to television, they got in league with footballers, they jumped on fads and trends.

Oh, sweet Lord! The fire in his eye was getting worse. He was going down in flames. Half-blind, he staggered to his office and crash-landed on his chair.

Leaning back, legs extended, he gripped the arms, neck stretched, mouth open in a mighty soundless roar.

All he'd wanted, all he'd ever wanted, was his own place, nothing fancy, nothing flash. What was so hard about that? He should have done it long before now. At Guy Savoy he'd been the one. He was quickest, smartest, best. He got in earliest, stayed latest, worked on his day off. He charmed his way round the chefs, ate his way round the markets, and chewed up a million books.

At twenty-four he was there in a two-star in the middle of Paris and he kept his head.

But what about Le Chevalier? He hadn't been so sober then. Anton had called him from London. Rapscallion, little rascal, mate. Fancy a whirligig around the wheel of fortune with your old comrade-in-arms? Three months he'd been with Guy Savoy. It seemed like long enough. They've made me general and I'll make you colonel. Bring your sash and your three-cornered hat and your ceremonial sword. Twenty-four, he was, and Anton twenty-five. They'd take all comers. They took a shitload of drugs. Anton had finished with his intellectual phase. He was into action now. They played Jesus and Mary Chain in the kitchen, snorted coke off the cutting boards, and fucked the waitresses, when they were amenable, on the flour sacks. The food started off pretentious and nouvelle and went swiftly downhill from there. Nobody seemed to notice. The place was hot for a while. It ended predictably and badly and Anton – honour and valour deserting him – vanished, leaving Gabe with a cavernous hangover only partially induced by the sudden withdrawal of his evening cocaine wrap.

The truth was, no avoiding it, that this was what he was like: weak-willed, unfocused, spineless. Unable to commit. It wasn't the only time that he had let things slide.

Everything was going to hell. Just look at him now. Fucking things up with Charlie, drinking and smoking in the locker room like a teenager, getting his rocks off with a—

He pulled himself up straight. His private life was a bit scrambled, but it hadn't knocked him off course. He was a steady sort of bloke.

Was he? He didn't think so a moment ago. At his core, though, he was ... what?

He couldn't think clearly, too much crowding in, too many notions, a sugar rush of thoughts.

You could make fantastic shapes out of sugar; he'd won a competition once.

Spin it any way you wanted, all in the wrist action, make it look like anything.

Gabriel snapped forward on to the desk and laid his head on his arms. He hadn't been sleeping well. If he rolled his brow across his sleeve exerting a small amount of pressure it eased the pain in his eye. He concentrated on this and a few minutes later melted into a caramel sleep.

He woke around four thirty, brittle and thirsty, a crick in his neck. After drinking some water he went out of the kitchen and upstairs. Since he'd witnessed Gleeson and Ivan's assignation in one of the empty guest rooms he had been meaning to check it out. Now would be a good time, no fear of being disturbed.

The door was half open. The room was a standard double, the conversion not yet begun. It had the tinned-flower smell of polish and a lamp that had been left on. Gabe opened the wardrobe. He pulled out a drawer. There was nothing, no sign of life. The bed was made, the blinds pulled, the wastebasket empty, the sanitary tape was over the toilet, the toilet paper left with a folded end.

Should he look under the bed? Perhaps he should hide under there and eavesdrop for a day or two. What did he expect? Contraband stacked in the shower? A corpse in the wardrobe?

He was about to leave when he noticed an envelope on the desk. It was the standard Imperial Hotel stationery left in every bedroom. But it was out of place, in the centre on its own. He carried on walking to the door but as he reached it he turned again. Come on, Sherlock, investigate. He picked up the envelope casually – too casually – and a waterfall of photographs cascaded to the floor.

Crouching, he gathered them quickly and at once his heart began to race. There was Charlie in her silver flapper dress, standing at the mike. Maggie, the Penguin Club waitress, staring dough-faced into the lens. Shots of tables, of punters, the backs of people's heads. A street shot showing the door. And here he was, with Ivan and Victor, Suleiman in the background, the night he took them all out. Somebody had taken a camera, couldn't remember who; it was innocent, completely innocuous, not evidence of some crime. He shuffled the pictures back into the envelope with clammy hands. Placing it carefully on the desk as he had found it, he headed back towards the exit, tiptoeing this time.

'Chef,' said Gleeson, hanging in the doorway fizzing, like a light bulb about to blow, 'what an unexpected pleasure this is.'

Gabe's arm shot up to the back of his head. 'Oh, hello, Stanley. Just passing, saw the lamp on ...'

'Of course,' said Gleeson quickly. 'Me too, saw the light, naughty, naughty, wasteful, must pop in and switch it off.'

Gabriel checked his watch. 'Well.'

'Well, indeed. Will you do the honours or should I?'

'What's that?'

'The light,' said Gleeson. 'The light.'

'It's five o'clock in the morning,' said Gabe, 'I think we both know ...'

Gleeson adjusted his cuffs. He cocked his head. 'Know?'

'Know ...' said Gabe, 'that ...' Hell. What did he know? 'It's the best time of day for catching up. No one else around.'

'Two of a kind,' said Gleeson, with a glutinous smile. His eyes flicked to the desk.

Branka, the housekeeping supervisor, snaked her head round the door. 'She's ready.'

Branka had all the right qualities for keeping her girls in order. When she passed down a corridor, checking up on them, she moved as if under sniper fire. She could probably catch bullets between those teeth.

'She's ready,' Branka repeated. 'Shall I bring her in?'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE OFFICE DOOR BOUNCED OFF ERNIE'S NOSE AND BACK INTO Gabriel's hand. Ernie had been standing there in the dark. The night porter had switched off the lights and the breakfast crew had yet to arrive.

'Ernie,' said Gabe, 'sorry, if I'd thought there might be someone in here I'd have taken a bit more care.'