The Belle Hotel

by Craig Melvin

  Charlie could hear the snapping sounds of Franco gathering the two herbs for his first test. His nostrils flared to woody aromatic sweetness and bitter bright jag of torn leaf.

  ‘That’s easy, Grandad. Rosemary and mint. Rosemary for roasting the lamb, mint for the sauce.’

  ‘Good lad. What goes with the mint to make it a sauce, then?’

  ‘Vinegar.’

  ‘What vinegar?’

  ‘Erm, malt.’

  ‘Yes. Good man. So now we’ll move onto some trickier ones. I’m going to sing a few to give you a clue and you guess which one’s which. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Keep yer eyes shut. You already know the rosemary, so that’s a help. Do you remember the sage leaf from that pork casserole the other day? Come on, look sharp. We’ll do the spices when we get back to the kitchen. Spices. Now they’re harder to grow. Seed, fruit, root, bark. Thing is, I don’t label the jars. No chef ever does. First thing you’ve got to know before you get let loose in a professional kitchen is your cinnamon from yer star anise.’

  The feeling of pride at passing Franco’s tests, first base camp on the long ascent to becoming a chef, made Charlie’s heart sing. It even lifted the dull throb he often felt, sort of homesick but not really knowing why. Belle Hotel was Charlie’s home, always had been. It was where he lived with his mum and grandad. But with his dad gone, Charlie’s empty feeling was best filled with work. The years it’d take to be what it took to lift Franco’s apron from the back of the kitchen door and stand tall at the pass as a chef, a man, was a trek Charlie and Franco felt worth taking. Not that it didn’t hurt when the old man bawled him out. Charlie had to toughen up, Franco as much as said so, no more blubbing behind the kitchen door like the time he’d forgotten his manners with Lulu and the menu. Man-up, Franco had said. You may be Johnny’s son, but you’re my grandson and while I wear the apron around here you’ll do things my way. That or you can sod off to London and go and live with him at The Savoy. Charlie went to correct his grandfather – he doesn’t live at The Savoy, he lives at the Barbican – but Franco made to give him a clip round the ear, which soon shut cheeky Charlie up. Franco laid the hand that had been raised in anger on Charlie’s broadening shoulders. He fixed Charlie with the steel gaze.

  ‘Righto, lad, I’m sending you out to learn two trades. Fish and meat. You’ve been working like a dog for a reason. There is a plan behind all this, Charlie. When you’re ready to cook, I’ll be ready to tell you what the plan is. You’ll come back to me ready to cook, and that’s a promise.’

  Charlie’s fifteenth year flashed by in a scaly sea-stink of Saturdays. Apprenticed to N. Sinker, fish-face and -monger to Brighton’s catering trade, Charlie raced late out of the twitten, his wrap of knives spearing the sharp south-westerly whipping in off the Channel.

  Sinker, Nigel to his friends so Sinker to most, was the last in a long line of Brighton fishermen, the one who sold the boat and dragged the show a hundred yards inshore to a paint-faded arch under the prom.

  Sinker still wore bright yellow boots and apron, shunning the white of his new trade in memory of his forebears. He rarely spoke, showed Charlie most of the moves in mime, and made the best fishcakes Charlie had ever tasted. Better than Franco’s, and that was saying something. Summer had been pleasant enough, gazing out at the two-blue horizon, beheading and gutting cod by the boat-load. Most of the stock now came from Newhaven. Sinker’s boat was run aground with the rest of the fleet, props for posterity in Brighton’s Fishing Museum. Winter was a fridge. Charlie could handle the heat, he positively thrived on it. But cold. Sinker’s icy-mongers was where he learnt the meaning of cold. November was ocean-frozen crustacea, shells hard on wet, ribbed fingers.

  Charlie looked out of the door of Sinker’s arch, open to let in the light, and the icy sea fret. The sea was an ever-present sound against the shingle and a handy timer against each mackerel he had to trim. Each time a wave crashed on the shingle, Charlie had his timer. A wave a side and Charlie knew he’d be done to Sinker’s satisfaction. The miserable monger worked deep in the rear of his cave, salty shanty laments for lost lovers and friends echoing against the dripping brick and filling Charlie with the old melancholy. Sinker had been chucked out of the Fishermen shanty singers because he couldn’t bring himself to smile for the funny numbers. That grimace was putting the audience off, they’d said one night in the Belle Hotel bar, making the holidaymakers’ kids cry, bad for tips, he’d have to go. Sinker had been seen that night, kicking the pier sign over in anger as he wove his way back to the hammock in his sail loft above the fish arch. Salty laments, sea frets and slithers of oily fish, fresh from the Channel. Lunch for the two-man crew whipped up on Sinker’s trusty primus, finished off with a squeeze of lemon and served with crusty bread.

  Sinker looked at Charlie, eyes pooling in the light of the puckering stove. He struck up a deep baritone hum. The fisherman’s grace. The song of the dying seaman to his mates.

  ‘Oh wrap me in my country’s flag,

  And lay me in the cold, blue sea

  Let the roaring of the waves

  My cold requiem be

  And I shall sleep a pleasant sleep

  While storms above their vigils keep.’

  Amen to that, said Charlie, tucking in the moment the throaty drone had stopped. The feeling inside him as the translucent mackerel, oily, salty, warm and slippery, sailed its way down his throat on a boat of bread. So simple, but the balance Sinker intuitively struck between salt, fat, acid and heat, those exact moments on the stove, made the difference between a good mouthful of food and something sublime. Charlie did what Franco had told him to do. Watch, listen, taste. Take each morsel you are offered and make something more of yourself from it. That is the way you’ll become a chef, my son. Fish, fresh from the sea. They warmed their hands a little on the last of the flame, each taking a tot of rum before going back to work, as the mid-afternoon darkness descended across the shuddering shingle of Albion Beach

  Then suddenly it was spring. Sinker nodded at a well-trimmed mackerel, flung rib bones, fin and tail on to the pile of parts and let Charlie go.

  ‘Says you’ll make a bouillabaisse yet,’ said Franco, with a wink, later that week. ‘When you come back from your dad’s we’ll start you on flesh and bones. Butchery. Here, have a little nibble of this daube of beef. New dish, Provençal. French. See the way the meat is so soft you could cut it with a spoon. That’s the effect of three things: time, heat and good butchery. And we know a good butcher, don’t we son. I’ll let Mr Brampton know you’re on your way. Sharpen your knives, Charlie, this is where the fun really begins.’

  Brampton’s Butcher’s of Kemp Town – purveyors of meat, offal and game for the Prince Regent, and boy could that old queen put back a brace or two – was little changed from its former self, as witnessed by the black-and-white photograph which hung proudly inside the door. John P. Brampton, the loud, meaty opposite of Sinker’s fishy silence, made Charlie laugh while he learned. Brampton joked, burped and farted in between popping next door to his wife’s cheese shop for a noggin’ of Sussex Valley Blue. Brampton’s was all smut, blood and muscle and heaving half-calf carcasses onto the Stilton-hued marble slab, watching where to plunge in the boning knife before tugging back with all his pre-pubescent might. Charlie liked working with meat, feeling his way with fingers and blade between the flesh, fat, bone and sinew. Learning to truss and dress, prepare the whole animal for use in his own kitchen. He felt competent and proud to be working in this way. Strong. It suited him, butchery. Charlie was there to learn how to prepare an animal as food. Brampton was sure of the need to know more.

  ‘You are now a member of the carnal confederation of butchers. You are learning to work with meat like a butcher. You must now make love like a butcher. For the rest of the night you must enact the dark acts of carnality, a butcher’s carnality. Got a girlfriend, Charlie? Yes. Go home and fuck the cream cheese out of her. Then rise in the hours before dawn smelling of carnality and un
load the meat from the lorry like a butcher.’

  Brampton thumped a shocked Charlie on the arm. He was still a virgin, but not about to tell that to the bawdy butcher. He ran home to tell Franco.

  Franco didn’t mind.

  ‘Take no notice of him, he’s all piss and wind.’

  ‘But, Franco, he says—’

  ‘Enough.’

  Enough. Charlie had done enough of that particular ascent. He’d scaled the arts of fishmongery and being a butcher. All was going according to Franco’s plan. His plan to win Belle Hotel a Michelin star and him a gold lapel pin from the Guild to stick in his best suit. Charlie felt proud to be doing well in his grandfather’s education. So well that he’d been perhaps neglecting his school work.

  ‘O levels,’ Franco had nearly spat out his coffee, ‘O levels? D’you think I got where I am because of O levels? Let me let you into a little secret, son.’

  Franco took Charlie’s chin in his cup-warmed hand.

  ‘The thing we’re working towards doesn’t begin with an “O”. Oh, no. The thing we’re working towards begins with an “M”. Sit, down, we’ve time before service. Janet, love, fetch me another coffee would you sweetheart and a Coke for the boy. Righto, before I let you loose on my book it’s time to tell you about the masterplan.’

  Brighton Secondary Modern

  School Report

  Pupil: Charlie Sheridan

  Mock Exam Results:

  English: GCSE Fail

  Maths: GCSE Fail

  Geography: GCSE Fail

  History: GCSE Fail

  R.E.: GCSE Fail

  Home Economics: GCSE Level Grade A

  Head Teacher’s Comments:

  Charlie is welcome to leave school now and return for his Home Economics GCSE Examination. I would like to say it has been a pleasure having Charlie at the school. I would like to say this, but I can’t. We wish him well in his chosen career.

  R.S. Caner, MA B.Ed

  Eggs Benedict was the first recipe Franco ever taught Charlie. At sixteen, out of school uniform, and into a pair of the absent chef’s trousers. They’d got sixty for brunch and double that for dinner. Franco was calm. High white hat, pencil in rim; pressed check slacks. He took the book down from its shelf above the hotplate and fixed his grandson with his gaze.

  ‘Charlie. Are you ready?’

  He nodded. Franco would never throw a pan at Charlie. Franco, who’d thrown that pan at Johnny. Franco who was standing there fathering Charlie, doing Johnny’s job, when Johnny had not been up to the job in the first place. According to Franco. Charlie kept his gaze on his grandfather, pushing the memory of the day his father left from his mind. The feeling of loss inside him being slowly filled up by Franco’s little tastes, flavours and notes on presentation. He was starting to love it, really love it, and want to be good. Good like Grandad.

  ‘The cause of hollandaise sauce curdling is either because the butter has been added too quickly or because of excess heat, which will cause the albumen in the eggs to harden, shrink and separate from the liquid.’

  The waiters hung back from the pass, they knew to let chef finish.

  ‘If it does curdle, place a teaspoon of boiling water in a clean number two’ – he swung down a copper-bottomed pan from behind Charlie – ‘and G-R-A-D-U-A-L-L-Y whisk in the sauce. Got that?’

  Franco had his back to the waiting staff. All chefs in his sightline were heads down and ready. Franco gave Charlie a wink and turned to face the hotplate.

  ‘Shall we begin?’

  You can’t keep a sauce this unstable during service. Any chef worth his salt knows this. It has got to be stabilised with a quart of béchamel. Béchamel is another page out of Franco’s book, another lesson for Charlie. Another part of the masterplan…

  The Masterplan

  1) The Basics

  2) Fish & Meat

  3) Recipes from Franco’s book

  4) Catering College

  5) Switzerland

  6) London

  7) Belle Hotel

  8) Michelin star

  9) Keep the bloody thing

  10) Make your old man proud

  1 September 1991

  9am

  Tick-tock. Time for Brighton Catering College, two years of pressure-free training, with a sweet stint in Switzerland for afters.

  The knife wrap, carrot-, cod- and kidney-spattered, was meant to live in Charlie’s locker at college. It didn’t stay put for long.

  ‘Henry’s gone sick. Bastard. Can you…?’

  ‘Just an hour or so, come on, do your old man a favour, Belle Hotel needs you, just till we break the back of it… good lad. Have a taste of this, too. Pondicherry Poulet Rouge. New dish. Something special about it, Charlie Farley. Something unusual in Indian cuisine. Because of the French influence. Vinegar, lad, just a tablespoon for this whole vat. But can you taste the sour edge it gives the dish against that heat and spicy sweetness? Goodness gracious me, this curry ain’t half brilliant, eh, Charlie? Got the recipe off Fizal at the newsagent’s just now. He got it off his mother-in-law who’d been brought up in Pondicherry and had a French cook who’d adapted the curries to suit colonial palates.’

  Aged seventeen, Charlie had his head in the cookbook canon and his hands in Franco’s washing-up.

  *

  It didn’t matter that he’d left school the proud holder of one GCSE in Home Ec. Franco had a masterplan and, now, Charlie did too. No amount of washing-up was going to put him off. He and Franco had their plan.

  ‘The masterplan is this: Michelin star. If you don’t know what it means to win one I’ll tell you, Charlie Farley. The French did a guide for their motorists before the war. If a place had got a star, it was worth a detour. Now then, the Roux brothers in London have got them. You remember Albert and Michel and Albert’s son, Michel Jr, don’t you? Friends of mine from the Guild. Now then, the Rouxs have got stars, but they don’t count because, well, they’re frogs, aren’t they. One of their own. But you, you are going to win Belle Hotel and Brighton a star. Give folks a reason to make a detour. I’ll never win one now. Too bloody old and set in my ways. Self-taught, too, they don’t like that. But you, you’re young and talented and we’ve got a plan. Stick to it and, mark my words, we’ll have a star over our door before I’m dead and buried.’

  Charlie’s heart swelled. Like the masterplan made him feel, for the first time since his dad had left, strong, no room for the dull ache. Each day that went by, little by little, his kitchen confidence growing. Like what Franco was saying might come true. Charlie would win a star.

  Sweet seventeen, Charlie and Lulu, bedroom confident. Another drowsy June afternoon in a single bed. Charlie’s room at Belle Hotel this time. Best chance of being left to their own devices. Miles Davis on. Little else. Three years older and, as of two minutes ago, wiser.

  ‘Lu, that was mega. I feel. I dunno, just want to hold you. Love you, Lu.’

  Lulu let him take her again in his arms.

  ‘Charlie. I love you, too. I’m glad we waited. It just felt… right today. You sure it didn’t split?’

  ‘No, all good. Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, a little… but that was lovely. And to do it here. Just like we planned.’

  Charlie stroked Lulu on the shoulder. He felt the anxiety lift. That was it. They’d done it. He was a man now. This wasn’t part of Franco’s masterplan, but it was part of his and Lu’s special pact.

  ‘So now what, Charlie Sheridan?’

  ‘We live here at Belle Hotel together. You’re front of house and I’m in the kitchen. Just like we used to play when we were kids.’

  ‘I’ve got to go to uni first. Get a degree. I don’t want to be just a hotel manager.’

  ‘Ohh, get you.’ Charlie slapped her bare bum. ‘La-di-da.’

  ‘Ow! That’s not fair. We agreed it. Charlie. Do we need to go through it again?’

  ‘Yes please, lover girl.’

  ‘Stupid, I mean the pact.’

/>   ‘Okay, Lu. Here we go… I’m going off to learn the craft in Europe and you, you’re going to university.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘And we’ll be faithful to one another. That’s why we just… so that we can be together like this before we have to be apart.’

  ‘Before that,’ Lulu squeezed him tight, ‘yes. I wonder what we’ll be saying to one another after making love in, say, ten years’ time?’

  ‘Something like, did you remember to turn the lights off in the bar? Something romantic like that.’

  Lulu shoved Charlie away and laughed. He tickled her and she laughed some more. Then he softened his touch, swirling his fingertips across her goose bumping flesh and slowly, tenderly, they began to make love for a second time.

  Brighton Catering College

  Professional Chef Diploma

  Charlie Sheridan

  DISTINCTION

  Chef-Lecturer’s Special Award for Progress

  Last Formal Day at Catering College

  ‘Students, you leave us with the technical skills and repertoire know-how.’

  The chef-lecturer scanned the room. Charlie felt his gaze land and settle on him.

  ‘Do you remember the day we made bouillabaisse? The aroma, the balance of flavour, size and variety of fish?’

  Charlie could taste that rich fish dish, as if he’d just spooned it into his mouth.

  ‘Remember me the next time you encounter this dish. What I taught you and what you will teach yourself the next time you taste it. The next time you prepare it.’

  Charlie could feel the weight of the simmering joy as he spun his imaginary ladle around the giant pan, fishing for the perfect portion to pour into the warmed bowl.

  ‘Know now that those of you who are serious about our profession will revise this dish, perfect it until it becomes your bouillabaisse. The one you want to be known for.’

  Charlie Sheridan’s bouillabaisse, thought Charlie, nice.

  ‘And now, students, before we release you into the world of professional catering for your period of training, your stage, think on all of the wonderful dishes from the repertoire that we have prepared together here. Each of these dishes will be tasted, touched and refined by any of you who really want to elevate yourselves from mere cooks into, what, students?’