by Will Storr
Her mouth made a barely distinct movement.
“Ah, the school of hard mums.” Her eyes flickered away. “Yes, well. Welcome. You should probably also think about not standing up to Patrick like that. You know, let the Wookie win? They take pride in how quickly they can get shot of apprentices. It’s like a game to them. That’s what they’re like here. Especially Patrick.”
“But not Max Mann?” I said.
Max Mann wouldn’t countenance this behaviour. I knew that. It’s why they called him “the Gentlemen Chef”. Because he never shouts.
“He never shouts,” I said.
I knew Max. I knew Max better than anybody.
Kathryn smiled, thinly, and agreed. “He never shouts.”
7
The room I was working in was eight foot by ten and, according to the thermometer on the wall, minus twenty-four degrees. The shelves were coated in a skin of fine frost and the packing tape on the cardboard boxes had become brittle and dark. Even with the thick orange overcoat and rubber gloves, the pinching air fought its way to my body without difficulty. It scraped the insides of my nostrils and my ears began to sear; so cold they felt hot. I decided to work without gloves to halt the burn in my fingers.
It wouldn’t be long now. The first lunch sitting began at midday – less than three hours away – and I’d surely meet Max before then. I didn’t know why that girl Kathryn had said what she had about this kitchen, but I knew when he finally arrived things would be all right. He’d want to sit me down, of course, and get to know the new apprentice who’d be cooking with him for the next six weeks – perhaps longer, if he was judged to be sufficiently skilled.
As my mind synched with my body into the rhythm of the counting and my hands began to recover, I relaxed into the daydream I’d been having since the afternoon Mr Mayle passed me the news of my placement. It wasn’t a fantasy, exactly – more a hopeful expectation. I’d seen it in my head so often it had come to feel as if there was no other possible sequence of events.
Max would invite me to sit with him on the restaurant floor, at a table near the kitchen. The waiting staff would be polishing silver around us and the chef would be in front of me with his ankle on his knee, his arm draped over the chair next to him, just as it draped over the back of the sofa when he chatted with Parky and Harty and Wogan. He’d ask why I wanted to be a chef and I’d tell him. I’d tell him about the days at Dor Cottage, those weekends and summer holidays when my mum sent me away because she couldn’t cope with me always under her feet, always hanging around, and how my great-aunt Dorothy taught me to make a béchamel, and I know, Chef, I know we’ve gone beyond these heavy, old-fashioned sauces with Nouvelle Cuisine, and that the modern way to dress a dish is with vinegar or lemon juice, but my mum didn’t want me under her feet all the time so I was sent away, and I stopped being sad once I became fascinated by the magic of all that, the matching the quantity of butter and flour and how it combined into this greasy roux and how you added those splashes of cold milk and how lumpy it was and ugly and the risk of it all going wrong if you didn’t work hard enough, if you didn’t whisk and whisk and whisk, and beat the ugliness out of it, with your elbows and forearms burning against the failure of it all, and it didn’t matter if you got some sweat in it, that was what my aunt said, it didn’t matter that my mum didn’t want me under her feet all summer, or that she thought I would only ever be mediocre, what mattered was the work and the fight and the flavour and the silkiness, the thickness, the luxury of it. You could see it, under the light from the bulb in the kitchen, how by sheer will you’d forced the roux and the milk together – they hadn’t wanted to go together, but you’d forced them, you’d beaten them, by the fire in your elbow, by the burn in your shoulder – and now, when you stirred, it purred under the light, it ran in slow waves, like the contours of a young body, like hips, it rolled up and down, thickly, smoothly, and I forgot all about home when I saw what I’d created and I grated the nutmeg but also some ground fennel seeds and, one time, some Stilton and some Parmesan and you wouldn’t believe how much flavour that sauce could absorb, this sauce that was once so reluctant, so disobedient, so out of my control, swallowing it all until there she was, you couldn’t argue with her, this sauce I’d made, this flavour I’d smashed into life, you couldn’t deny how it made my great-aunt Dorothy proud and my mum, Chef, the way my mum looked at me when she tasted my food, that sauce wasn’t mediocre, she knew it, even though she said I was a typical man and I would only ever be mediocre and that I should want to be something proper that does something good for the world and even though I was always under her feet, there was this moment when she tasted that sauce that her eyelids fell, it was an involuntary reaction, as involuntary as love, if you don’t mind me putting it like that, Chef, and I have to tell you about my aunt who would tell me these stories, Chef, these stories about my distant relations. I’ll tell you, Max, because then you’ll see it’s in the blood, you’ll see you made a great decision when you chose to hire me, I’m a natural chef, a witch’s nephew, and really, as we’re talking like this, as we’re getting on so well and getting so close, I can tell you that I think you’re just like me, and we’re going to work together so well because we’re the same in lots of ways, just the sa–
“Oy, flid.”
It was Patrick.
“Yes, Chef?”
“Le Patron wants to see you,” he said. “Upstairs.”
8
“You’re Killian,” said Le Patron. He was reading from a letter that was laid in front of him, which I could see was from West Kent College. The tips of his fingers pressed on the edge of his walnut desk, his nails looking slightly yellow, his square-cut ruby ring looking uncomfortably tight on his thumb. His grey hair was thick – combed and oiled into a side-parting – and he wore his maroon braces over a crisp white shirt that exuded such a powerful simplicity that you could tell it was expensive. A pile of five or six identical shirts, wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic shrouds, had been thrown over the leather club chair in the corner. He appeared to be in his early fifties, his eyes old but his skin tight and relatively unlined.
“Saint Killian,” he said. “Irish bishop. Informed the local lord he was in violation of sacred law for marrying his brother’s widow. Lord had him beheaded in the town square. Doomed himself in the service of his duty.”
He searched my face, as if he was trying to find traces of a decapitated bishop. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.
“I’m Ambrose Rookwood,” he said, eventually. “Le Patron. The proprietor. Your teacher at West Kent college, Robert Mayle. Old friend of mine. Talented cook. Opened my first restaurant with him in 1955. Poor Mayle, couldn’t cope. Pace was too much for him. Very sad. He might have told you?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“Ah.” He peered back down at the letter without focusing on it. “Now, Killian, enlighten me. Tell me what you know about what we do here. What’s your take?”
He said the word “take” slowly and loudly, exposing a set of grey teeth. I’d never met anyone like this before and I felt adrift: I couldn’t read his cues and unusual tics. My eyes swept across his office, taking in the bare floorboards that became visibly dusty as they neared the walls, the chipped ivory goblet on the mantelpiece, the framed etching of a naked woman riding a sexually excited horse and the ashtray full of the distinctive white butts of Kent cigarettes. I’d always thought of posh people as somehow cleaner than the rest of us; whiter, purer, naturally scrubbed and polished from birth. And even though Ambrose had a grubbiness about him, it felt inherent and perfectly correct. There was something celebratory about it; something expansive and wicked that made me feel intrigued by him, whilst at the same time, utterly terrified.
The problem with giving him my “take” on Nouvelle Cuisine was that Dorothy had taught me classical cooking. I was excited by it and the creativity and the previously unimaginable flavour profiles it promised but I had never actually tasted it. I hadn�
��t even seen it in colour: I’d only looked at the photographs that sometimes appeared in the restaurant reviews in the Evening Standard which I’d make a special detour to Tonbridge Station after college to buy. I remember, in particular, a picture of Mann’s terrine of vegetables – these blocks of carrot, runner bean and artichoke, surrounded by a velvet ocean of “farce”, his red sauce of ham, egg white and arachide oil, famous because all the implements required in its preparation had to be stored in a fridge and used immediately.
I began slowly. “It’s definitely revolutionary, Nouvelle Cuisine. You know, everyone goes on about the tiny portions, but it’s not about that, it’s about lightness, delicacy and taste. Simple ingredients, cooked simply and presented artfully. That classical Escoffier cooking, all those heavy sauces thickened with rouxs, lots of butter, cream, boiled vegetables, over-seasoned meats and overcooked fish – we’ve moved on. There are different techniques, now, like steaming, au sec and microwave ovens. The ingredients should taste of themselves, not of butter or sauce.”
Ambrose lit a cigarette, sat back and nodded for me to carry on.
“Obviously, it started in France, with Fernand Point at La Pyramide. He’d rebelled against spending days and days preparing loads of stocks and mother sauces, so he said he was going to start with a naked kitchen every morning – nothing stored, nothing pre-prepared, nothing left over, no horrible stodgy floury sauces masking the tastes. It was him, wasn’t it, that started thickening sauces by reducing instead of using roux? And he had some amazing apprentices working under him – you know, the Troisgros brothers, Alain Chapel, Paul Bocuse. They all got influenced by him. And then you had Michel Guerard and Roger Verge. The ‘Young Bulls’, they called them. They had this light, fresh way of cooking – took it even further in their restaurants, swapping ideas, seeing how far they could push it. Then in… uh… ” I stalled and looked at the ceiling “…1972 the Gault Millau gave it its name. La Nouvelle Cuisine. But, you know, it’s Max Mann that’s really brought it to its full potential since then, isn’t it? His pan-fried oysters on mango slices with curry sabayon and his deer and tangerine pie are classics and I read in the paper the other day – is it right that he had to take his duck with blackcurrants off the menu because everyone’s copied it? Obviously, I’ve not tasted it yet, but…”
“Cuisine minceur,” Ambrose muttered.
He folded his arms across his belly which, now he’d sat back, suddenly popped into existence under his shirt, and looked out of the window. The mid-morning light picked up the smoke from his cigarette and wafted it into his face. He didn’t blink.
“Thin cooking,” he said. “In more ways than one.”
He’d reddened noticeably.
“Fernand Point, the so-called ‘Godfather of Nouvelle Cuisine’ – he had a little catchphrase. Do you know what it was? ‘Butter! Give me butter! Always butter!’ Let me tell you, I have had the heavenly pleasure of eating an egg prepared by Monsieur Point. Do you know how he prepared it? He slid a raw egg from a plate into a melted lump of butter, cooked it on an extraordinarily low heat and then melted more butter over the top of it. He then seasoned it. And then? Do you know what he did next? He added more butter.” He paused, with a sizzle of menace. “And that’s your precious godfather of Nouvelle Cuisine! These pop stars and American actors that dine here, they’re more interested in their waistlines and being written about in Nigel Dempster than eating a fine meal. They dress for the evening with ‘Feed The World’ T-shirts beneath their awful Cardin jackets and they can’t even feed themselves. Of course, Max is a genius, but –”
He stopped and peered at me curiously, as if I’d just dropped from the sky into the space in front of him. “Oh dear,” he said. “I’m getting carried away, aren’t I?”
“N–”
“Yes,” he said, nudging a space between the butts in the ashtray with his cigarette and extinguishing it with a push of his yellow-stained fingers. “Yes, I am.” His face bore the suggestion of a mischievous smile. “Never mind,” he continued. “I’m sure you’re the soul of discretion. Now, young man, as you’re no doubt aware, the apprenticing programme we run here is highly sought after. If, after your six-week stage, you’re deemed worthy of it, you’ll be offered the opportunity of being employed as an ouvrier cuisinier and then, if you survive another year or so, a commis. It sounds like you know all about Max. He’s a wonderful, wonderful man to work under.” His eyes left me for a moment. “And it is true, what he says about his programme. He has never, in fifteen years, given up on an apprentice. Some may have left of their own accord, of course. Many, in fact. Most. But he has never asked a single man to leave, for any reason, before their six weeks is up – a fact he takes an enormous amount of pride in. That’s testament not only to his patience, commitment and faith in the traditional brigade system, but also our selection process. I should tell you that we wouldn’t usually take an apprentice from a college such as West Kent, but Robert wrote to tell me you’re something special. And, of course, you have reached the finals of the Young Saucier competition.”
“Yes,” I said. “The same one Max Mann won in –”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “As I’m sure you know, the winner will be announced at a luncheon at Grosvenor House later in the month. I have certain contacts on the panel of judges and, of course, it would be imprudent of me to reveal the outcome early. Perhaps I’ll just tell you we don’t hire losers, here at King, and leave it at that. So. I’d like you to prepare my lunch. Steak, mashed potatoes and some of this award-winning sauce.”
9
I arrived back downstairs from Ambrose’s office weightless with the news. In the previous twenty years, there hadn’t been a winner of the Young Saucier of the Year competition that hadn’t gone on to be starred in the Michelin Guide and receive at least a 14/20 in the Gault Millau. There had certainly never been one that had come from a low, municipal college like mine. It was Max Mann’s win in 1972 that had given him his first small taste of national fame. You’d sometimes read about it in interviews with him; how news of the Young Saucier rarely breached the mainstream press, but how that year the papers ran cartoons alongside stories about the prize that were thickly marinated in irony. Max’s father was Brian Mann, this notoriously nouveau-riche millionaire. He owned the roadside café chain Speedy Sam’s which, even back then, had a reputation for serving unreasonably priced food that, once plated, seemed to have a miraculous capacity to generate its own flood of water and grease, rendering what was already barely edible so soggy that it usually ended up being scraped into an overflowing bin. But Speedy Sam’s thrived regardless, probably due to his monopoly over all the A-roads. Those same interviews would also note the suicide of his mother, and how Max was supposedly ashamed of both his culinary and familial roots and how the Gentleman Chef became uncharacteristically prickly when they were mentioned.
I stood by the kitchen door for a time, watching. I had learned at school that if I placed myself in just the right shadow and didn’t move, I could remain unnoticed for a length of time that would astonish a normal person. When I’d been there long enough to roughly work out where the necessary pans could be found, I collected them together and returned to my station.
Next to me was that girl, Kathryn. She was julienning mangoes, carefully transferring the matchstick slices into a small steel bowl nesting in a Tupperware container filled with ice.
“I need some ingredients,” I said to her, quietly. She flinched at my voice, and ignored me.
“I have to cook Le Patron his lunch,” I said.
“On your first day?”
She looked astonished.
“Is that good?”
“Jesus, impressing Ambrose is the best way to get a job here,” she whispered. “That’s how Patrick started. But don’t screw it up. If Ambrose doesn’t like your food, you’re fucked.”
She lowered her head as Patrick walked down the line, in conversation with a rangy cook with a brown food smear on his tunic a
nd biro all over his left hand. I pretended to be busy and, after they’d passed, Kathryn made no effort to speak again. Her eyes had darkened, her lower lip was pushed downwards in a look of blank concentration. Her fingertips, with their gnawed edges, pressed gently into the firm mango flesh. A little crease between her unplucked eyebrows told me that she was annoyed. I wondered if it was because we’d almost been caught talking.
Hers was a very English prettiness. The cream skin, the freckles, the hair that was simultaneously modest and conspicuously beautiful in its gentle curls and lustre. Her irises were startling – green with crumbs of black and dark gold. Her lips held themselves in an arrangement that told of a tough and perhaps dangerous humour and she had that busy, active alertness about her presence that speaks of intelligence; a mind constantly running. The quality of her culinary technique was also evident. She worked with confidence and tenderness; concentration and economy; delicacy and power; not a movement wasted. And her birthmark, it was –
“Can I help you with something?” she whispered. “You appear to be staring at my face. Is my birthmark fascinating you? Pass me some oil and a pan and I can make you one just like it, if you want.”
I looked down, my cheeks heating with shame.
“I need some Worcester sauce and some paprika, port and ground fennel,” I whispered. “Do we have any ground fennel?”
She looked at me with an expression of apparently genuine confusion and said, “You must stop now. Stop looking at me. Stop speaking to me. Whatever you’re thinking, when you’re thinking about me, please stop thinking it. Unless it’s hatred. Your hatred I can cope with. In fact, I welcome it. I think we’ll get on best of all if you hate me. And if you can’t manage that, try pretending. Can you cope with that? Do you think?”
