In the Kitchen (9 page)

Victor sauntered over to the stockpots, threw a mock punch at one of the commis, moved him aside and lifted a lid. Steam rose in a column and dispersed, like an idea that can find no words. The extractor hoods roared momentarily and dropped back to their usual thrum.

'Hey,' said Victor, tossing his head at Damian who was standing, pigeon-toed, feeding noodles into a metal vat. 'Hey, come here, let me see.'

Damian pretended not to hear. He spilt noodles all around.

Victor took hold of the younger boy and pushed his chin up to inspect his neck. 'Wooo,' he screamed. 'What is this? Damian got a girlfriend. Everyone see this big, ugly thing? Love bite!'

The cooks beat on the work surfaces with whatever implement they had to hand.

There were whistles and a couple of catcalls, all dissolving into laughs.

'I offer my congratulations,' said Suleiman.

'He's getting married?' said Victor, pantomiming shock. 'Man, he kept it quiet.'

'In my country,' said Benny enigmatically, 'the bride price may be no more than a case of Heineken and a slaughtered goat.'

'Well, that's way more than a commis can afford.' Victor banged Damian between the shoulder blades. 'Looks like you're choking, dude. Listen, I'm gonna give you a tip. Next time you wanna get dirty with this old bird of yours, ask her to take her teeth out first.'

The laughter was shrill but not hostile and even Damian giggled along.

Gabriel gave Benny a hand to make up more portions of bass and scallops en papillote. It was selling faster than Gabe had anticipated; perhaps because he had asked the waiters to snip the packages open at the table. It created a little drama which other diners were keen to reconstruct.

Benny worked quickly and neatly, wiping his station down almost every time he turned about. He was a small man who somehow gave the impression of being a larger man who had been condensed down to this size – something about the height of his buttocks or the spread of his shoulders or the way his head seemed a little too large. The whites of his eyes were yellow and his teeth were salty white. A jagged scar ran from the bridge of his nose almost across to his ear. Gabe thought about asking him which country he had left behind.

'Goal!' shouted Victor, chucking a romaine lettuce in the air and heading it on to a shelf.

'Give me strength,' muttered Gabriel. He picked up a scallop and sliced off the muscle tab.

'I know, Chef,' said Benny quietly, 'but that is the way he is made. Every one of us made differently.'

'Really?' said Gabe, flatly. 'Guess it's not his fault, then.' Oona was another one: it ain't suppose to be. A nice trick to have up your sleeve.

'If you don't mind, Chef,' said Benny, 'I'm going to sing a little now, keep going at the work and sing.' He sang, very low, in his own language, the words bubbling thickly like a rich and spicy stew.

Gabriel ran a mental checklist on the preparations for tomorrow's Sirovsky event. Some of the dips and sauces would be past their best by tomorrow night.

They could be freshened up with a squeeze of lemon, a sprinkling of chopped herbs. He would have to go up to Blantwistle and see Dad. Dad and Nana. After tomorrow he'd be less busy. He'd think about it then, make a plan. He hoped Chef Albert wasn't going to ditch the marzipan roses. Not that they'd get eaten anyway, it was all about the show. Dad and Nana. Who'd have thought it?

God, it made him laugh; to think they'd ended up together, those two.

It had begun, Gabriel supposed, by Nana visiting more often after they had moved to Plodder Lane. She couldn't say anything against the house, unlike the one in Astley Street, except it didn't have doubleglazing. Her nemesis, Mrs Haddock, had doubleglazing and since she, on a widow's pension, couldn't afford any for herself she felt that the least her son-in-law could do was to have it installed at number 22.

'You've to shop around, mind, for the best price. But there's a lot of cowboys out there, as'll part a fool from his money.' She sat primly at the edge of her seat, knees pressed together. 'Or her money,' she added, significantly.

Despite his promotion, Gabe and Jenny were given to understand, their father was somewhat lower down the social scale than Nana. This was on account of her husband having been a clerk at Rileys, who went to work in a shirt and tie rather than a pair of overalls. Dad was a tackler. They weren't called overlookers, not in Blantwistle, even the foreigners knew that. Dad was proud of his job. The people in the office, Dad said, didn't know warp from weft.

'I could never sit of an evening, not with shirts waiting to be ironed.' Nana was fond of mentioning shirts.

'A tackler,' said Dad to Gabriel, 'earns twice what a clerk gets. That's a fact.'

Gabriel believed him, but there was no withstanding the force of Nana's insinuations, insinuations being particularly hard to disprove.

'I've never seen such waste,' said Nana, arriving one bonfire night with a sticky black slab of parkin in an old Quality Street tin. 'Perfectly good clothes those Beesley children have put on their guy. Their mother should be ashamed.'

Mum was stirring vinegar into the black peas and staring into the kitchen window, from where she stared back at herself. 'Nobody's wearing straight-legs any more.'

'Sally Anne,' said Nana, touching the crisp curls of permanent wave around her head, 'I'm perfectly aware of that.'

Wasting money, in Nana's book, was vulgar. There was no higher sin. Those who had no money were also vulgar. Vulgarity took many forms and few in Blantwistle escaped its taint.

Gabe knew her for a snob while he was still a child. But for a long time it was impossible for him to see how anyone could be a snob unless they were also at least a bit posh.

When she moved in, it was Dad who encouraged it. Mum said, 'It'll be the death of me. Is that what you want?'

'This is what I mean,' said Dad. 'The way you get worked up. You've always been calmer when she's around.'

'But you hate her,' said Mum, wheedling.

'Aye,' said Dad, 'that's as may be.'

Nana moved into Gabe's room and Gabe had a camp bed in the sun porch at the back. He was at catering college by then, on day release to the Jarvis at Manchester Piccadilly. Nobody expected him to stay around for long.

Nana said she couldn't sleep in Gabe's old bed. She kept spraying it for bedbugs. Gabe came home at one, two, three in the morning and found her roaming in her nightie, support tights and Hush Puppies, making cups of tea that she left, half drunk, all over the house. She was partial, it transpired, to a glass of sherry, just a small one, now and then through the day.

Exhausted by these and her night wanderings (on account of which Dad had slapped the 'shapeshifter' label on her) she was often back in bed by noon.

When she needed something fetching – the newspaper, her bifocals, her medicine, two ounces of humbugs – she banged feebly but insistently on her bedroom floor and Mum growled and muttered before running up the stairs.

It was, supposedly, on 'account of her health' that Nana moved to Plodder Lane; yet it was only after she'd lived there for a while, as far as Gabriel could remember, that there seemed to be anything wrong. As was to be expected, her illnesses were refined in nature. Coughing she deemed to be vulgar, but breathlessness, from which she suffered, was not. When she had back pain it was sciatica, and most definitely not the lumbago of which any common labourer might complain. She had arthritis in her knees, which compared favourably to Mrs Haddock's varicose veins. Dr Leather was a frequent if somewhat reluctant visitor, though he seemed to spend less time in the bedroom with Nana than in the kitchen with Mum.

'She'll be the death of me,' said Mum, when Gabe got back, from time to time, from Glasgow, Scarborough, Lyon, wherever he happened to be. Perhaps, thought Gabe, she was. A heart attack at fifty-four. All that running around Mum did after Nana.

Nana was eighty-seven and still going strong.

From the corner of his eye Gabe caught sight of Damian holding his hand in the air and gurning while blood ran down to his sleeve.

'First-aid box, Damian. In my office, bottom drawer.'

Damian licked his finger and smudged his nose with blood.

'Doc,' called Benny. 'Take a look. Damian, let Doc see your hand.'

It was the crew's name for Nikolai.

Nikolai wielded his knife. 'The finger cannot be saved. I shall have to amputate.'

Damian laughed and waggled his finger but disappeared rapidly, nonetheless, into Gabriel's office.

Nikolai set down his knife. 'I propose a silence,' he said.

Everyone stopped working and turned to look. Gabriel wanted to object but he too was held in suspense. Nikolai was only a commis but he was older than the chefs de part
ie.
He didn't say much, he worked hard, and when Gabriel wanted to put him in charge of a section Nikolai had turned him down. He had carroty hair and his face was bloodless as a veal chop, no colour in his lips or lashes. When he spoke it was with authority and sadness, like the gallows oration of a deposed king.

'Friends and colleagues,' said Nikolai, 'it has been a week since Yuri's death. I know how sad we all feel about this terrible accident. I would like everyone, with Chef 's permission, to join in one minute of silence as a mark of respect to Yuri.'

Gabriel bowed his head. Why now, he thought, why in the middle of service, when every minute counts?

He counted off the seconds. 'All right,' he said, 'back to work.'

The silence hung about like a bad smell, until Victor broke wind.

'May I remind you,' said Suleiman, laughing, 'that this is a confined space.'

Victor went over to Suleiman and burped right into his ear.

'In Moldova, this is a sign of love. Am I correct?' Suleiman retreated a couple of paces on his little bow legs. Gabe smiled at the way he made his enquiry with apparent seriousness, as though he would inscribe the answer on to an official form.

'Too right, baby,' said Victor, attempting to grab Suleiman by the balls.

'Gentlemen,' Gabriel called, 'we're not in the fucking playground. Eyes down, go to work.'

'Yes, Chef,' said Suleiman. 'Chef ? Extractor hood has a malfunction.'

'Report it to maintenance in the morning. Can't do anything now. Who's done this trout? Well, come and get it and do it again. Never mind "done", lad, put it in the sink and watch it swim.'

'In the morning, OK, I will make a report,' said Suleiman. 'When Yuri was here he used to fix always, very fast.'

'Right,' said Gabriel. 'There's your problem. You don't let the porter mess with things like that.'

'Oh, Yuri was an engineer also. Full qualifications. He understood very well the machines.'

Two plates were sent back to the kitchen, lamb noisettes and a chicken Florentine. The waitress said the customers had complained.

'Complained about what?' said Gabriel.

The waitress chewed her gum. 'The food.'

'The food. That's so much clearer now.' Gabe banged down the plates. 'And kindly take out that gum.'

He burned his finger on a jug of béchamel sauce and watched the blister rise.

An order came in for a table of twelve. Gleeson had not warned him about the booking. Gabriel cursed the restaurant manager; once silently and then again aloud. 'Where's the red mullet?' he shouted. 'Come on! Two fries and one mixed salad. Don't make me ask again.'

Ivan slung a pork skewer and a fillet steak on to the pass, adding a little spin to the plates. He wiped his meaty forearms on his bandanna and went back to his station. His jaw was blue-black with stubble. He took a cleaver and with one clean slice chopped a chicken in two.

Victor stood in the grill section, attempting to burn Ivan with a stare.

Gabriel was about to tell him to move it, but wanted to see how Ivan would deal with the incursion into his domain.

'You smell like whore, Victor. You looking for pimp over here?'

Victor's face contorted. He had an in-growing hair between his eyebrows that was turning into a boil, visible even through the haze of heat. 'Fuck you,' he said, and turned.

Gabriel went to the sink for a glass of water. Gleeson slid up beside him, as usual standing a little too close.

'Here you are. Do I intrude on a break?'

'Can I help you?' Gabe folded his arms.

When Gabe had taken the job at the Imperial, he and Gleeson had gone out for a drink and weighed each other up.

The restaurant manager pretended to consider a moment. 'No,' he said, greasing the word. 'I don't think so.'

There were stories, of course, about Gleeson. He was screwing Christine, the head of PR, he was screwing a guest liaison officer, he was gay and he screwed all the waiters. Gabe paid no attention. Most likely everyone said he and Gleeson were screwing as well. Gleeson's sexuality, like his personality, was hard to determine, everything seeming to be put on for effect.

'And what did Inspector Morse have to say for himself ?' said Gleeson, after Gabriel had declined to fill the pause. His manner was off-hand but Gabriel detected a pulse of anxiety. Whatever illegal stunts Gleeson was into meant he was uncomfortable with the police around. Gabe knew it would be unwise to wind him up. 'Asking about you, mainly. Said I didn't know a thing.'

'Quite the comedian, aren't we?' said Gleeson. 'There's a couple more people wanting entertainment in the dining room. They would like to see the chef.'

'I'm busy.' Gabe drew another glass of water. It was 'common knowledge' that Gleeson drove an Alfa Romeo Spider and went on holiday three times a year to places he shouldn't have been able to afford. In hotels, gossip was always known as common knowledge, even when palpably untrue. But, in Gleeson's case, it wasn't too hard to believe.

'Forgive me,' said Gleeson, 'but they are most insistent. Perhaps they are your friends.'

'I doubt it.'

'Don't you have any friends?' Gleeson smiled. He was a handsome man, slickly dressed and neatly trimmed. The light in his eye, though Gabriel mistrusted it, was both piercing and playful and it was likely that many had succumbed to his charms.