Dinner at Wyatt's

by Victoria Gordon

  Oblivious to the mirrors in her anger, Justine slung off her clothing, flinging the dress to crumple over the back of a chair, crumpling her tights into a formless ball and carelessly tossing them into a corner. Then she strode into the bathroom and diligently scrubbed away her make-up, meeting her own angry eyes in the mirror with a haughty disdain as her mind conjured up revenges too radical for words.

  Then, finally, she threw herself into the huge bed, expecting to be kept awake all night by her anger, but asleep too quickly to be surprised.

  She was only marginally less angry when she came awake just after dawn with a sense of disorientation that lasted only a moment.

  Showered and shampooed, her hair wrapped in a turban of towelling and her body crying out for nourishment, she was just belting on her robe when a soft knock at the door startled her.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called out suspiciously, fingers all a-fumble as she tried to remember the complicated operation of the spy-hole Wyatt had shown her.

  ‘Possum,’ came the reply, so quickly she no longer needed to see. Justine flung open the door to admit the slender singer-dancer-kitchen hand, dressed this morning in a pale ivory cat-suit and balancing a large tray in one small hand.

  Possum stepped into the room, passing the surprised Justine with barely a glance as her eyes darted around the room. ‘So this is the famous mirror room,’ she said, eyes roving from image to image as she spun, complete with tray, through a full circle. ‘God, you’d have to be brave to get your gear off in a place like this! It’d give me the creeps, no worries.’

  Then her eyes took in the evidence of Justine’s hasty disrobing of the night before, and widened just a bit as she turned to look at her,

  ‘I thought you might be having a bit of a tiff with the lord of the manor,’ she grinned. ‘Hope it wasn’t on account of me. Anyway, he’s not too angry; he sent me up with your brekkie.’

  ‘He what?’ Justine couldn’t quite take it in. After Wyatt’s chilling departure, it was the last thing she might have expected.

  ‘Brekkie — you know, toast, coffee, that sort of thing? Even tea, if you’d rather. He didn’t seem to know what you’d want, exactly.’

  Justine’s mind whirled, but her stomach had no such confusion. It simply screamed for tea so loudly she had to obey.

  ‘Lord, yes,’ she sighed. ‘Come and have some with me, unless he’s got you doing something else.’

  ‘Love to. I’ve only had coffee so far this morning,’ Possum replied, gliding over to set down the tray on the small kitchenette table.

  The two girls sat in silence long enough to get through that first cup — tea for Justine and coffee for Possum, then Justine flipped open the serving dish to find not only toast, but bacon, two eggs and some hash-browned potatoes.

  ‘My goodness,’ she protested, ‘I can’t possibly eat all this!’ But she did, while Possum kept up a running commentary that began with a quite unexpected apology.

  ‘And I’m apologising purely for me,’ she said. ‘We’ll just ignore the fact that both Sebastian and his lordship threatened mc with horrible punishments. But I just couldn’t help myself yesterday. You were sitting there, and you looked so ... so ...’

  ‘Gullible?’ Justine prompted through a mouthful of egg.

  ‘Yeah, that’ll do. But it was really my fault. I’ve got an awful sense of humour — everybody says so. And then last night, well ...’ She giggled softly, almost spilling her second cup of coffee. ‘If you could have seen your face when I walked out on that stage ... it was priceless! I thought you were going to faint or something, for a minute. I just about broke up. And Wyatt ... once he realised something was up. Oh, if looks could kill I wouldn’t be here now!’

  Wyatt? Justine had no memory of him being that way at all. If anything, she thought, the looks he’d been directing towards Possum were anything but murderous.

  ‘Too right,’ Possum continued, correctly reading Justine’s expression ‘There are times I reckon he’s got no sense of humour at all, although he has, of course. It’s just not quite the same as most people’s. After all, look at this place. To put you in here shows he’s either got a sense of humour or he fancies you like anything. I mean, most of us have never even seen this suite.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ Justine mused half to herself. ‘I’m sure he told me the other head chefs had been quartered here.’

  ‘And pigs do fly,’ Possum laughed. ‘This whole wing is Wyatt Burns’ private domain; he’d no more have had any male chef, much less the last one we had, living here than fly to the moon.’

  And with that pearl of wisdom she flung herself to her feet and headed for the door. ‘I’m off now,’ she said quite unnecessarily. ‘See you in the kitchen when you’re ready. Armand — he’s your Number Two — is already there getting the provisioning under control.’

  ‘Oh, great. Just what I need is to be thought late on my very first day,’ Justine sighed. ‘Take this tray with you, if you don’t mind. I’ll be there in, oh, twenty minutes maximum.’

  ‘Don’t hassle it,’ Possum replied with a wry grin. ‘The guy you’re replacing never showed until ten o’clock at the absolute earliest, and nobody ever complained about it.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but then he isn’t here any more cither,’ Justine rejoined.

  ‘Yes, but it had nothing to do with his starting times. Word is he got sacked because Wyatt thought he was paying too much attention to Gloria — that’s Gloria Calder, the hostess here, if you want to be generous with your descriptions. Now if Wyatt had installed her in here,’ and she waved expansively around the mirrored room, ‘well, let’s just say nobody’d have been too surprised. She’s been trying hard enough and long enough to get herself installed next door, if you know what I mean. Anyway, she’s been on holidays for a week, won’t be back till next week, I think. And no sooner was she gone than Wyatt lowered the boom on the chef you’re replacing.’

  Turning towards the door again, she retreated long enough to grab up the breakfast tray, then swung round for one parting comment. ‘I can’t wait to see her face when she sees you!’

  ‘It was a feeling Justine couldn’t quite share, she thought as she rushed through her toilette and got into her working clothes to begin her day in the kitchen.

  The rest of the morning sped past in a blur of introductions, unfamiliar faces and the sheer hard work of trying to fit herself into the established routine of the Wyatt’s kitchen. Justine was wise enough to realise that in the beginning it would be she who would have to adapt; only a fool would try to walk into a successful operation waving a big stick and demanding all sorts of changes.

  Her Number Two, a burly French-Canadian named Armand Duplessis, shaped up immediately as one of her major problems. His condescending attitude upon introduction had rapidly deteriorated into one of outright hostility, and made it abundantly obvious that he had expected to be awarded the job Justine had been given.

  Not surprising. Indeed, Justine would have been more surprised if he hadn’t been hostile, but she nonetheless considered it a major priority to try and win him round to her support.

  Clearly she had no such worries with Possum, and the various kitchen hands and waitresses and waiters she met during the day seemed, if nothing else, neutral.

  All but the head waiter, who was perhaps the biggest surprise of all, in his own unique way. Sebastian proved, to Justine’s surprise, to be the classic, archetypal English butler, which should have accounted for Possum’s cunning grin when she introduced him to Justine, but somehow didn’t ... quite.

  He seemed strangely familiar, but it wasn’t until he divested his plummy English accent and manners for just a moment, plummeting into a classic Greco-English patois to ask how she had enjoyed dinner the evening before, that it all fell into place.

  ‘Zorba!’ Justine cried in unfeigned delight. ‘Oh, and you were … perfectly.’ So this, she thought, explained Wyatt’s comments about Possum’s talents and his prediction: ‘You hav
en’t seen Sebastian at his best, either.’

  ‘Yes, madam,’ he replied, once again in the butler mould. ‘And if I may be so bold, madam, may I enquire if my wife’s apology this morning was satisfactory?’

  Wife? Justine was absolutely floored. She stood there, mouth open but wordless, for so long that the incomparable actor before her got a very worried look in his eye.

  Then, before she could speak, he turned and bellowed something in Greek, something long and ominous-sounding but in which the only word Justine could recognise was ‘Parthenia!’ What followed when Possum finally arrived would have qualified as classic Greek comedy if it hadn’t been so obvious that Sebastian was serious. He waved his hands, shook his fists, cried oaths (or at least Justine presumed they were oaths) to the skies and stamped his feet.

  But just as Justine, horrified by her own part in the assault, was about to speak out. Possum leaned over to kiss her husband softly on the mouth, stopping everything abruptly.

  ‘Isn’t he sweet?’ she cooed to Justine as she tossed up her head and sauntered back to wherever she had come from.

  Justine fully expected Sebastian-Zorba to explode with rage at that point, but he only shrugged, eyes alight with inner laughter.

  ‘And 1 am, too,’ he chuckled, holding out his hand to grasp Justine’s and shake it heartily. ‘Welcome to chaos, Justine.’ Whereupon he kissed her heartily on both cheeks and whispered in her ear, ‘I just hope you’re not all uptight and disapproving like that froggy devil over there.’

  A whisper, of course, that was just loud enough so that Armand couldn’t help but hear it. The frustrated, angry glare he threw at Sebastian would have slain a lesser man, but Sebastian, as the butler, stalked haughtily back to his dining rooms without a backward glance.

  ‘Animals!’ Armand sneered. ‘Nothing but frustrated, no-talent animals!’

  He swung himself around and ploughed through the swinging doors, only to rebound from the arriving form of Wyatt himself, a Wyatt whose thunderous countenance as he watched the departing French-Canadian did nothing for Justine’s already questionable serenity.

  ‘You’re off to a fine start, I see,’ he glowered. ‘What the hell’s going on down here? I could hear the rumpus all the way up to my office!’

  ‘Rumpus? There wasn’t any rumpus,’ she replied with faked calmness. ‘Just a little staff discussion, that’s all. I’m certainly sorry if it bothered you.’

  ‘It didn’t bother mc, but it obviously bothered him.,’ Wyatt snapped, thumbing a gesture at the door which still swung from the second cook’s exit. ‘I suppose now I’ll be advertising to replace him, tomorrow?’

  ‘I most sincerely hope not,’ Justine replied, biting at her lower lip to stop it trembling.

  ‘And so you damn well should,’ he threatened, eyes like coals burning into her own. ‘Because it’d be a toss- up which position I’d be advertising. Understood?’

  ‘Perfectly! Now if you don’t mind, our first lunch guests should be here any minute,’ she replied waspishly, and was greatly surprised when he took her un-subtle hint and retreated from the kitchen without another word.

  More important, to her great delight, he stayed out of her kitchen for the next three days, days which she found absolutely vital in her bid to establish an acceptable working relationship with all the other staff.

  Armand, of course, was the only major problem. Justine quickly became tired of his arrogance and near-insolence, but short of throwing herself on his mercy and pleading, she just couldn’t figure out how to swing him to her support without a major confrontation.

  But with the arrival — and departure — of the butcher’s van on the third day, matters foamed to a head with a speed that left her little choice of positive action.

  It was just on three o’clock, and Justine was working in her little alcove office with one ear cocked for the distinctive sound of the butcher’s van. She had asked Armand earlier to advise her on the man’s arrival, because she had plans for a rather lengthy discussion with whoever was supplying them with fresh meat.

  How she missed the van’s arrival, she didn’t know, but when she was startled by the van’s horn screeching out its habitual farewell, she reared up from her chair in anger. Damn Armand! She knew full well he had deliberately ignored her instructions and was obviously spoiling for a direct confrontation, and now he’d get it.

  She barely held herself in control as she strode into the main kitchen area to find the juniors all busy with their own work and Armand nowhere in sight. Then she followed one of the juniors’ eyes to the rear door, and found her second in command bent over the box of freshly-delivered meat.

  She sucked in a deep breath, only too conscious of the eyes following her as she walked quietly through the door and stood, silently, watching Armand sorting out the meat.

  Her voice, when she finally spoke, was soft and quiet and very, very cold. ‘I thought I asked you to advise me of the butcher’s visit,’ she demanded.

  Armand, clearly surprised by her presence, straightened abruptly. But his eyes were shuttered and watchful, hiding his habitual insolence for once.

  ‘I thought it best not to disturb you, madam,’ he said then, in a voice colourless but infuriating.

  Justine fought back a biting reply, forcing her face to show none of the anger she felt. Instead, she looked him up and down, exactly, she thought, like a butcher inspecting a side of beef. A slightly raised eyebrow registered silent disapproval of the stain on his tunic front, and his vanity flared quickly.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but Justine was too quick for him. In the same soft voice she asked politely, ‘Don’t you like working here, Armand?’

  His mouth dropped open; for a second he was flummoxed, then recovered. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I enjoy very much working for Wyatt.’ Not Wyatt’s, nor even, Justine noticed, Mr Wyatt. She bit her tongue.

  Looking around, eyes roving over the greenery of the surroundings, the soft lines of the outbuildings, she waited a moment, then spoke in a deliberately idle tone.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘Having people who enjoy their work is very important to a house like this, with such a high reputation to maintain ... in all things.’ And she stared again at the stain on his tunic, revelling in the flush which rose to his cheeks. ‘I’ve been meaning to mention, by the way, how very pleased I’ve been with your sauces. A light, capable touch, like yours I haven’t encountered since I left Paris.’

  Again he flushed, but Justine wasn’t sure if it was because of the compliment ... or because he’d just realised she might actually understand some of the rude things he’d muttered in French about her in her hearing.

  But whatever. else he had been expecting, she realised, it certainly wasn’t a compliment. He was definitely confused now, and she leapt in while she still held the upper hand. ‘I’m also very pleased at how thoroughly you’ve been instructing the juniors,’ she continued. ‘It isn’t every chef who has the confidence to ensure that his underlings get the very best of instruction. Most are too afraid of being usurped. Why, one of the best that I ever knew in Paris was afraid to take a day off, for fear that one of the younger chefs would steal his position. And he certainly didn’t have your flair for instruction, or at least not the nerve to risk imparting all his knowledge where it might be turned against him.’

  Then she abruptly dropped the subject like a hot brick. Asking Armand to bring the meat cartons into the kitchen, she turned and preceded him without waiting to see his reaction. It wasn’t until she’d opened the first carton and begun to inspect it that she spoke again.

  ‘My God! Look at this ... just look at it!’ she stormed. ‘If that’s veal I’m a Jersey bull; in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what this is.’ She turned to the second chef with indignation written all over her face.

  ‘Damn it, Armand, what dos this fellow think he’s dealing with — a couple of amateurs? I won’t have my reputation, or yours, put on the line by s
erving this ... this junk. Obviously my predecessor must have picked out his own meat; I can’t imagine you accepting crap like this.’

  Which was no lie. Whatever Armand’s personal faults he was a perfectionist in his work, and Justine knew it.

  She’d been less than impressed with the meat she’d been working with during that first few days, but had little choice but to use it. But this ... this was of even poorer quality, she found after ripping open the rest of the cartons.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that it’s high time this butcher was put in his place. It’s an insult to this restaurant, and to us, and I don’t intend to put up with it.’

  I am with you, Madame,’ agreed Armand, and the sincerity in his voice so elated Justine that she turned away on the pretext of further examination to hide that elation from her new-won supporter.

  ‘There isn’t even an invoice with this,’ she snapped. ‘Now I don’t like that; not one bit.’

  ‘There would not be,’ Armand replied. ‘All the invoices in the past have gone directly to Miss Calder, I believe.’

  ‘Right! Well, that’s another thing that’ll be changed,’ Justine said angrily. ‘There’s just no way I’m going to have us responsible for anything we can’t control. Would you please pack this stuff back up; I’ve got a phone call or two to make.’

  It took her ten minutes on the telephone to line up a new meat supplier, one she knew to be reliable and probably even cheaper than the one she was about to dismiss. And another five minutes had the former butcher’s bewildered assistant assuring her that yes, he would inform the boss that this order was unacceptable and was to be retrieved by the butcher that very day.

  An hour later her new supplies arrived, but it was nearly five before the old butcher arrived in his noisy van.

  Justine thrust back her shoulders and drew several deep breaths before calmly asking Armand to bring out the unaccepted meat, then going out herself to meet the butcher at his van.

  The man was leaning negligently against one mudguard, his white dustcoat soiled and his unkempt appearance quite enough to make Justine shudder inside. They had been buying meat from this?