by Will Storr
“ …take off your shirt…”
And then my sock would be all mended.
“ …and come here.”
All nice and safe and mended.
* * *
The next morning, my mother met Mark’s mum at the school gate and slapped her face. I looked on, my heart bursting with love and pride as she raised her finger in the face of a mortified Margaret House and said, “Nobody touches my bloody son.” Mr and Mrs House were never invited around for cocktails again.
And then, four years later, my life changed again.
3
West Kent College was a gloomy hustle of 1960s buildings – vandalised, damp and gloweringly concrete – whose catering department had the capacity for fifty-five new students a year. On my first morning, I was one of seventy-nine who gathered in the breeze-block training kitchen underneath the ceiling tiles with the damp, like apple rot, spreading through them. Mr Mayle, our faculty head, told us not to worry too much about the cramped conditions; that the head-count would soon be reduced to a more manageable amount by the inevitable “Malthusian check”.
The reason for the course’s over-subscription was simple: the rise of Max Mann. During the late seventies I had become intensely fascinated by the ubiquitous chef and his famous London restaurant, King. There were chefs who had more culinary respect in the country – Raymond Blanc, Nico Ladenis, the Roux brothers – but it was Mann who had somehow come to personify the heat and glamour of ultra-fine dining.
They called him “the Gentleman Chef”, because of the famously peaceable way in which he managed his kitchen staff. He was known for never shouting at his workers, and was proud of the young juniors he trained into stars and his record of never having fired one – “I’d never give up on an apprentice,” he’d often swear on chat show sofas, as if the very idea was heresy. I knew all the facts about him – lines from the many dozens of press clippings that I would cut out and file carefully into my collection. Like: it was Mann’s restaurant in which Elton John and his wife ate Sunday lunch; where Mohamed Al Fayed had celebrated his purchase of Harrods; where the singers went for a free meal following the recording of ‘Feed The World’. It was Mann, more than anyone, who had a pioneering appetite for the French food movement, “la Nouvelle Cuisine”, and, in part, his celebrity was generated by his reputation for small portions on big plates and the pairing of fruits with meat and fish. All the best comedians would do bits on him. There was this Two Ronnies sketch, set in a Wimpy bar, in which Corbett was handed a bowl of chips that came with an unpeeled banana sticking out of them before Barker was given a hamburger that had a slim patty of beef and an entire pineapple jammed between the buns. One Spitting Image joke had a starving Ethiopian bursting into tears when a latex caricature of Mann lifted an enormous silver cloche off a King-style square black plate to reveal a chicken wing and half a grape.
He’d appeared on all the chat shows – Parkinson, Wogan, Russell Harty – and always did variations on the same routine, which the students at college would impersonate. He’d start by taking the presenter’s predictable jokes about Nouvelle Cuisine with grace, explain to a disbelieving audience that, honestly, no butter at all was used in his cooking and that the meat and fish really were cooked “au sec”, by being dipped in cold water and heated in a Teflon pan. This would segue into his dryly sarcastic defence of foie gras and then his anecdote about Michael Jackson’s entourage ordering hot dogs. He’d finish by batting away questions about the rumoured OBE and the elusive third Michelin star by laughing and saying “Oh do come on now” in that Etonian accent that was sharper than a January wind.
Whenever you saw photographs in the Sun of pop stars or actors walking into King itself, the flash was always on their faces, blacking out the background. But the background was what I wanted to see. I used to examine those pictures during my lunch breaks, my thumb over the faces of Morten Harket or Liza Minnelli, peering into the dead ink behind them. The most you ever saw was a neatly trimmed rectangular hedge and a canopy over a small door. Somehow, that made the place seem all the more magical. This dull façade, behind which worked Max Mann and his brigade; this unassuming building in a low neighbourhood you’d just walk past if you didn’t know better.
It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that, by eighteen, I’d grown to love him. I’d had my head shaved to a grade-four crop, to mimic the hairstyle he demanded of his brigade. I studied how he sat on the TV AM sofa and the particular way he had of crossing his legs with his ankle resting imperiously on his knee. I cut out all the pictures of him I could find – even the postage-stamp-sized ones from the listings pages of the Radio Times – and super-glued them onto my bedroom wall.
I ended up on the course at West Kent because my mother was determined that I would go to college. To her shame – and having failed the rest of my exams due to my almost total absence of application – cookery was my only realistic option for study. I soon discovered some unwelcome news about the course. Thanks to Mann’s superstardom, Mark House – after toying with rock star, photographer and footballer – had apparently decided that he was destined to become a world-famous chef.
* * *
We’d completed our initial classes in theory, hygiene and basic kitchen mathematics and were about to begin the practical work. With the class gathered before him, Mr Mayle announced that before we moved on to the basics – stocks, mirepoix, concasse, tourne – he wanted to test our basic skills by seeing how good we were at domestic cookery. That coming Monday, he said, we were to present our own preparations of lasagne for tasting by the class. By happy accident of his personality, Mayle always managed to co-opt his students into respectful behaviour by matching their natural teenage instinct for cynicism with his air of gently amused detachment. He spoke with a subtle grin that was so barely detectable as to be tantalising: it danced juicily between one or two tiny muscular twitches at the extreme left side of his mouth. “There’s a host of basic skills involved in a simple lasagne,” he said. “Let’s see if any of you rabble have what it takes to out-cook Signore Birds Eye.”
On the morning of lasagne day I was surprised to find that I was the only student who’d arrived in class sufficiently early to begin the process of cooking ragu which, Aunt Dorothy had always taught me, took at least four hours; one for the sautéing of the soffritto and the browning of the meat, three for the softest simmer it’s possible to tempt from your hob. This was the kind of thing I’d learn every weekend and school holiday after Mum, usually complaining of my being “under her feet”, had driven me to Dor. On birthdays, Dorothy would take me from my home in Tonbridge to some of London’s ethnic areas – the Bengalis and Bangladeshis in Brick Lane; the Chinese south of Soho; the West Indians in Brixton – where we’d have lunch for inspiration before spending the afternoon shopping for curious and fantastic ingredients – red gram, white miso, kecap manis, Jamaica flowers, West African giant snails. Then we’d putter back from Hailsham Station in her old Peugeot and she’d go through her collection of stockpots and roasting pans, all of which were so ancient and dented and tarnished by fire that I came to recognise each eccentric one of them as if they were characters in a Gothic children’s book. We’d spend the evening cooking an experimental birthday meal on her ancient range.
It was on one such birthday that we had concocted the version of lasagne that I was now so familiar with, I’d almost forgotten it could be made any other way. As I worked in the silence of the West Kent kitchen – my coat hanging alone on the row of hooks outside, my bag of condiments placed reassuringly by my feet like a loyal pet – I added star anise to the soffritto and used ham stock instead of chicken or beef. The candied sweetness of the spice, I knew, worked in gorgeous symphony with the baconiness of the stock and three or four light dashes of Spanish sherry vinegar gave a subtle fizz of acid.
Gradually, my new classmates began to filter into the room and soon they were all frantically working away, the spirit of competition having galvanised th
em into seriousness. They were as studious as I’d ever seen them, carefully measuring tablespoons of tomato purée and weighing blocks of mince. Many stopped Mayle as he walked the classroom’s aisles and asked earnest questions about dried oregano, sunflower oil and tinned versus fresh tomatoes.
I was stirring hard, the steam from the ragu making a patina of sweat glisten on the back of my hand, when Mark House bashed his way through the swing doors.
“Hmmm, Eyeballs,” he said, peering into my food. “Bit more salt, maybe?”
He picked up my shaker, unscrewed the top and dumped the contents into the pot.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now it looks like shit and tastes like shit. Consistency, yeah?” And he sauntered off in the direction of his stove.
The salt had fallen in a single iglooish pile that was sinking quickly into the ragu. I grabbed a ladle and tried to remove all the sauce that had had the chance to absorb it. As usual, it was Mark’s casualness that struck me – that ruining my dish wasn’t some act of piqued fury but an entirely unremarkable event; a reflexive twitch.
The pressure in the room built as burners burned and lips pursed to taste and arms became sore with stirring. Eyes drifted to Mayle as he strode up and down behind the cooks. Girls smiled up at him, boys feigned professorial concentration. The bolder amongst the students would stop him with a trembling, sauce-filled spoon and say, “Sir, what do you think of this?” or “Sir, enough mixed herbs?” and each time he would politely decline, insisting it was up to them – that it was a test of their judgement of flavour, not his. Everyone became aware of their neighbour’s desperation to beat them, and that stoked their own insecurities and drew them into trying yet harder. Around and around it went until the designated time, when we lined our plates up along the blue trestle table that had been erected in front of Mayle’s demonstration kitchen.
Having managed to rescue my sauce, I watched from the back as everyone picked out a fork from an old water-filled ice-cream tub. As I retreated back to my station to start clearing down, I passed Mark, who was proudly delivering his dish to Mayle. He’d brought in his own special presentation plate, which he was holding with both hands and gazing at with the pride of a new father. His lasagne was a firm, bright brick of red food with a sprig of parsley on the top. In a nod to the fashionable cooking of the time, he’d made a salad of what looked like red grapes and lightly sweated onion. It all looked neat and attractive and completely different from mine, which I now realised was a disaster – a slipped pile of steaming meat, the mornay sauce I’d used instead of béchamel bleeding into the ragu in little landslides of creamy white.
“Sir, please, sir,” said Mark, pushing his plate into Mayle’s hands. “I don’t want it to get cold, sir.”
I turned and watched as Mayle surrendered and took a bite. Mark’s gaze flicked between the dish and the teacher’s lips, his expression one of gelatinous pride, an eyebrow raised in anticipation of the glory.
“Hmm,” said Mayle. “Yes. Interesting texture.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his tongue along the roof of his mouth. “There’s something almost… pre-masticated about it.”
It took the boy a good three seconds to realise that what he was hearing wasn’t good.
I was about to take another step towards my dirty pots when I noticed, in the long mirror that was suspended above the demonstration kitchen, that a small clot of students had formed at the far end of the trestle table. They were gathering around my plate. I would wash up. That’s what I would do. What did it matter if everyone was laughing at my dish? Why would I care? I was mediocre and happy that way. I didn’t care at all.
As I carried my knives, chopping board and pans towards the sink, I couldn’t help but have one final look at what was happening. Mayle was moving towards the group. I turned on the hot tap, squeezed in a spurt of detergent and held my fingers under the scorching water to distract myself with pain. So what if Mark House had made a better dish than me? Why would anyone be surprised about that?
In the mirror, I watched, with my fingers held under the hot tap, as the teacher cut into my pasta with the edge of his fork and scooped up a mouthful.
In the reflection, Mayle began to chew. The other students were watching the action, many with tight almost-grins. And then it happened. Mayle’s eyelids dropped. Aunt Dorothy always said that that, for a cook, is what laughter is to a comedian or what tears are to a storyteller. When he opened them again and tried to seek out the cook responsible for what he’d just eaten, I’ll never forget it. He looked as if he’d been provoked.
“Who made this?” he said.
He must have realised who it was by the colour of my face, or the fact of everyone turning towards me. There were giggles and smirks and whispering. I dried my fingers tenderly on my apron and tried to suck some moisture into my mouth. I had never had so many eyes on me before.
“I don’t know exactly what you’ve done here,” said Mayle. “But this lasagne is like none I’ve ever tasted.”
Mark House snorted like a hog that had been unexpectedly mounted.
“It’s wonderful, just wonderful,” he said. “Beautifully, beautifully deep and rich flavour. And so complex! What’s your name, young man? How did you do this?”
I was incapable of doing anything but shrugging, uselessly. Mayle, to my eternal relief, smiled and gave me the kindest little nod. I got back to my washing-up and tried to tell myself that I didn’t care. But, already, it was too late.
It wasn’t until I lay down in bed that night that I realised that something essential had changed. All those years I believed that I had removed myself from the competitiveness of the world, I had been fooling myself. I had been competing with almost everyone I’d known and my fight had been harder and more determined than any of theirs. The only difference was, mine had been a race to the bottom. That was the only battle I believed I could win. As I closed my eyes to sleep, I was sure of only one thing.
It wasn’t any more.
That night I dreamed of Dor Cottage under months of ceaseless rain; of a long-caged magic in the garden, in the roof and in the mortar.
I dreamed of the sixteen steps that I’d climbed with courage as a boy. I looked up, from the bottom, over the rims of their crooked wooden surfaces. At the top stood a figure, weak and wordless with dread. Her face half hidden in darkness, she stared through me.
I’d not seen her before, but I knew her. She’d been with me always – in my sleep and back in the dead times.
I saw a dying room, tall with windows. Glass murky with the dirt of a thousand rain storms and the black bones of winter trees. And then, a beautiful girl. Long eyelashes and freckles across her face like a fine spray of milky chocolate. A blood mark on her face. Dogs in a circle, their claws slipping on a hard, smooth floor. She was begging them to stop.
And I believed it, then, about the magic and the ancestor. I understood about the hunger and the howling. I understood that it was real and it would come. All of it would come.
I saw fire and flies and turnspit dogs and boiling bones and blood under the fingernails of men.
It was a dream of past and a dream of future.
It was a dream of horror.
4
Around six months after lasagne day, I was summoned, unexpectedly, into Mayle’s office. I knocked softly and pushed open the door, which released the usual smell of old books, carpet and Amaretto. An antique-ish standard lamp in the corner cast dull, licentious and yet homely light, of the kind you’d see in an old-fashioned bistro.
“Hullo, Killian,” Mayle said. He placed the book he’d been reading, spine down, on his cluttered desk. “Sit down, sit down. I have some good news for you. As you know, in a couple of weeks everyone’s going out on their work placements. Trying to place everyone is always a nightmare but we’ve somehow muddled through as usual. Most of your classmates are off to institutions or big companies. Schools, hospitals, staff kitchens in Safeways – canteen work, in the main. Bean-stirring. M
ark House, you might be interested to learn, is spending a fortnight in an oil rig off the north-east coast of Aberdeen.”
He paused to let that near-imperceptible smile flicker across his mouth.
“We have had a tiny bit more luck with you, however.”
He smiled gently and leaned forward with his hands on his cheeks. The skin on his face bunched around his eyes so that he looked unnaturally delighted.
“But before we go any further, some good news. Your entry into the 1985 Young Saucier of the Year competition.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, suddenly alert. This was the award once won by Max Mann himself. Flattered as I had been when Mayle had asked me to take part, I realised that it was only because the college felt it should be represented.
“You, young man, are a finalist.”
My jaw slackened.
“You may swear,” nodded Mayle.
“Fuck!”
He laughed warmly and swept a bit of imaginary dust off his desk with his fingertips.
“Yes, indeed. Needless to say, this is a first for West Kent. An amazing achievement. A high point of my teaching career and I thank you for it, sincerely. You have a huge talent, Killian. A rough diamond, perhaps, but a diamond certainly. I think you’ll go far. But you’re going to have to learn to be a bit more of a team player. If you have ambitions to be an executive chef and lead a brigade, you do actually have to talk to other people, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I know, sir.”
He held my gaze for a moment.
“Anyhow, because of all this, I have managed to pull a few strings. You’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve arranged your work placement for six weeks, rather than four.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are very, very welcome, young man.”
I stood and gave Mr Mayle a grateful bow of the head.
