by Will Storr
“You wait here,” he said. “We’ll be back in a sniff.”
Following in Ambrose’s wake, I felt as if I was struggling through a narrow black corridor, with walls of dark pupils that clicked onto me a moment after I’d passed.
None of them wanted to be caught in the action of watching me, but I saw every one sliding in, blinking, crafty and quick. As we pushed towards a flight of stairs, a shameful urge grew in me. I wanted to grab hold of Ambrose’s hand. I wanted him to look after me.
We went up a wide flight of empty stairs. There were golden statues of naked boys in dimly lit recesses and fake red flames flickering behind glass. We walked into a gent’s bathroom. The walls were painted matt black and, by the sink, there were bottles of cologne and piles of perfectly folded handtowels made from fluffy cotton with “Café de Paris” stitched into them in golden thread.
“Are those real towels?” I said, amazed. “Aren’t people just going to nick them?”
Ambrose disappeared into a toilet cubicle.
“Come on, then,” he said, poking his head around the door.
“Ambrose, I don’t really like things like this,” I said, pulling the door closed behind me. “I don’t want to stay too long.”
He smiled broadly. One of his molars was made of metal.
“Well, let me help you enjoy yourself,” he said. He removed a small silver case from his pocket, which had an elaborate engraving on its cover, and opened it with a click. There were a number of small paper parcels inside it, one of which he unwrapped carefully. It was powder, compacted so tightly that you could see the lines of the paper folds marked into its surface.
He slid a Platinum American Express card from a Burberry wallet and used it to push some of the powder onto the spotless black-tiled shelf above the cistern. I watched him arranging it into two lines of fine dust, his pushes and chops so practised he could have been a Michelin chef julienning a carrot.
He rolled up a grubby one-pound note and bent down to take his share, each particle of the stuff hesitating for a fraction of a second before rising up and disappearing high into his long nostrils.
“This will make you feel much better,” he said, standing and sniffing repeatedly. He handed me the tubed note. “Well, go on, then.”
I hesitated, then copied what he’d done. I was surprised how easy it was – for some reason, I had always imagined snorting drugs would take some sort of practice. It stung my sinuses and a plasticky, chemically taste made itself known, along with a gammy numbness that began to spread down the back of my throat and tongue.
“It is speed?” I said, standing up.
“Oh dear God, no,” he said, laughing. I watched carefully to see if any detectable change had come over him. “Oh bless you. Speed! Here…” He dropped two wrapped packets into my palm. “You’ll be needing these.”
I looked at them doubtfully.
“Trust me,” he said. “It’s a long night. You’ll be wanting to, er, what’s the phrase they’re all using these days? Re-record, not fade away.”
“Don’t you care about getting caught?” I said, my hand still open in front of him.
“Not a chance of it. Money may not buy you happiness, Killian, my fine boy, but it does buy you freedom. Reach a certain level, as no doubt you will discover, and you’ll find that the tapestry of life becomes a good deal richer with possibilities, especially in the realm of things to do for fun.”
I felt nothing at all as we strode back down the magnificent stairs, except for slightly enormous. But there was a clamminess on my forehead and my socks had sprung wet with sweat. As we turned the corner, I looked again upon the crush below – the thick, smoking stew of champagne, mouths and eyes. I took a breath and savoured the sensation of air filling my lungs, my body, my brain. I could do this.
“Hi, hi, hi,” I said as we went. Each time I said it to a different face, I noticed a different reaction. It was like ringing bells. Delight, embarrassment, respect, defiance, quick nods that were rippled through with complex veins of envy, alarm and fear. I saw fat hands on slender glass stems, scarlet fingernails lifting cigarettes to shining lips, spittle-flecked teeth in guffawing mouths, shirt collars pressed into scarlet, goosey throats and cocktail dresses with jewels that trapped rainbows and low-cut dresses that showed the skin, the smooth skin with the pearls and diamonds and the moles and the deep cleavage and the noses and the elbows and all the whispering words, all the hundreds of thousands of fluttering, skittering, whispering words, pointed at me: there he is, there he goes, that’s him, that’s him, that’s Killian Lone…
“Where have you been?” said Kathryn when we found her.
“Just briefing Killian on protocol,” said Ambrose, rising up on his toes with purring satisfaction. “Now – you two young things. Come with me.”
I watched my feet as he guided us through the crowd, my shoes rubbing against my heel, my soles wet with sweat. They didn’t suit me, those shoes. They weren’t even mine. Hired for six pounds. Rented. Who else had walked in these shoes? Why were they wet?
“Killian!”
Ambrose’s face was leering into mine.
“Allow me to introduce you to the editor of Restaurant Magazine. Craig Rolly, Killian Lone. Killian Lone, Craig Rolly.”
“Fabulous to meet you at last, Chef Lone,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ve been following your career closely. Fascinating stuff. What a story. Meteoric, eh?”
I could see this Craig Rolly, with his triangular smiling mouth and his hair spiked high like the Russian out of Rocky. But I couldn’t face him directly because I was transfixed by the man next to him. I was beginning to feel odd. There were stars running between my eyes and my brain. They were drying out my mouth.
“Hello, Max.”
I looked at Max’s shoes. They had buckles on them. Buckles. Look at the shoes, the shoes of Max Mann.
“I’m saying, it’s amazing, the speed of your success,” the editor repeated. “Max was just telling me…”
“You don’t want to believe anything he tells you,” I said.
Rolly glanced conspiratorially at Max, who responded with a snide, leonine smile. And there was a third man, in a loose suit of shiny grey, who snorted fatly at some private joke that had evidently been shared between them.
“And what’s this one?” I demanded, pointing at him with my thumb.
“Bill,” he said, holding out a hand like a boiled pork chop. “Bill Hastings, how do you do?”
“I know you,” I said. “News of the World.”
I glared at Max, as the light from the chandeliers above fell softly on his shark-wide eyes and arboreal nose. “Mate of yours, is it?”
I turned back to Kathryn who was occupying herself staring up at the ceiling. “He’s the one that wrote that shit about me crying.”
“What?” she replied, irritably.
“That shit about my sauces being drugged. You know? It’s him. Bill Hastings.”
Rolly leaned in, his cow-eyes heavy with champagne smugness. “I can assure you, Chef Max has been regaling us all with tales of your fantastic rise.”
Max took an oyster from a passing waiter, who was carrying a reef of seafood in a deep ice-filled silver dish with carved cupid handles. “Would you believe,” he said, “that Killian could barely strip a bunch of basil when he started under me?”
He opened his mouth, pushed out the tip of his tongue and let the shining mollusc slip in.
“I spent six weeks with Max,” I shouted to the editor. “That’s all. Six weeks. My aunt taught me how to cook, not him.”
There was another voice, from behind, trying to get in.
“Killian? Max?”
I turned to see Ambrose. A grease-sheen of sweat was visible over his forehead. Moisture sparkled from its creases. “Could I borrow you a moment, please?” He addressed the other two. “Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen. I’ll have them back in a jiff.”
The crowds parted once more as I followed the men, with
Kathryn behind me, until we reached a clearing in a grubby corner by a fire exit. A white paper background had been erected, covered with the logos of Dom Perignon champagne, the company that had apparently sponsored the event. There was a white light that shone with such violence that it ached in the backs of my eyes. Just behind it was a cameraman, in an old blue polo shirt, loose jeans and sandals, and a woman in a wide shoulder-padded suit jacket in pastel blocks of yellow, green and red. I recognised her. She was from the television – Gillian something.
A crew member in fashionable brown oversized spectacles began clipping a microphone onto my lapel. I said to Kathryn, “That woman’s from Food and Drink. My mum watches that.”
“Your mum?” said the man, with a chummy smile.
“Yes,” I said, a little embarrassed at his overhearing me. He began attaching a wire to Max, who was standing beside me, grinning in his condescending way. “I was just saying,” I continued feebly, “my mum watches this.”
And then, we were on.
“I am joined by two London chefs who are very much the stars of this glittering occasion, Max Mann of the celebrity restaurant King and his young protégé Killian Lone of the superlative Glamis, which is fast becoming one of the hottest gourmet tickets in the world.” The presenter turned to Max. “Max, you must be proud?”
“Oh, enormously so,” he said. “I have just been saying, when young Killian here began at King he couldn’t even strip a bunch of basil. Hard to believe, I know. But I was an early supporter of Killian’s, despite several of my colleagues expressing doubts. I could see something in him and I’m glad I had my way. He took up a good deal of my attention, I must say, but I think all my hard work has been worth it.”
“Worth it indeed,” she smiled. “Killian, it sounds like you have the so-called Gentleman Chef a lot to thank for?”
There was all that light and the black box pointed at my face and there, just about visible in it all, the woman I knew from the television. I pointed my mouth towards the tiny microphone on my suit.
“My aunt taught me to cook,” I said, loudly and slowly so that nothing could be lost. “And now I’m the most famous chef in England.”
I squinted back into the light and heard Max chuckle. My jaw ached. My tongue felt fat and dry, like something sitting dead in my mouth. Stuff. I needed some more of that stuff. I had to get out of there. I blinked irritably into the light and turned around to find Ambrose. Where was he? I could see Kathryn, her face all jagged with alarm. She was shaking her head, mouthing, “No!”
“Well, he’s certainly got the confidence!” the presenter was saying brightly.
“And all this amusing nonsense about his adding secret ingredients,” Max continued. “Well, he should just allow your crew in to film him cooking. That would silence the doubters. What do you say, Killian?”
The silhouette of the woman seemed to be looking at me.
“Any time,” I said, into the blackness, which smoked and glowed. “Any time whatsoever.”
“Thank you, Killian, maybe we’ll take you up on that exciting offer,” said the presenter. “And Chef Max, we certainly wish you the best at the awards tonight.”
He gave a little bow. “Thank you.”
I plucked the microphone from my lapel. “Come on,” said Kathryn. “Let’s get a drink.”
I was about to address Max again but Kathryn pulled me so hard that I felt it in the muscle of my forearm. She led me, quickly into the hot mass. They were a vast army of murmurers squashed into the building, all in black and sparkles, their heads pink, jowly and painted and shooting out bursts of ugliness and beauty that hit me as I passed. Every one fascinating, grotesque, the women arranged with such startling prettiness that my heart would groan with joy and sorrow as I saw each one. So many faces. Each one firing eyes at me, spelling out the words with their wet and sliding drunken tongues: there he is, there he goes, that’s him, that’s him, that’s Killian Lone…
Kathryn took me to a quiet corridor that led to the kitchen. We sat on the floor as the stern tray-carrying waiters came and went above us. I rubbed my eyes. Everything was so confusing.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said, trying to pull her legs inside her dress. “How did you get so drunk?”
“I’m not drunk,” I said.
I looked crossly at my shoes. My heels were sore; the leather was pinching my toes and the elastic in the socks was too tight.
“Well, what’s going on then?” she said. “‘I’m the most famous chef in England’? Come on, Kill, that’s not like you.”
I bent forward to untie my laces, surprised at how relaxed I was feeling about the whole thing. “Jesus, did you see those photographers? All saying my name. Shouting it! I’m going to take my shoes off. Shall we get some whisky?”
Kathryn’s grump lifted into a smile. She gave a naughty, delighted laugh.
“What are you doing?” she said. “You can’t go shoeless.”
“Shoes aren’t compulsory.”
“They are in the Café de Paris.”
“It’s like Ambrose told me, money doesn’t buy you happiness, but it does enable you to fuck around with no shoes on.”
“Ambrose didn’t say that,” she giggled, making a half-hearted, flirtatious attempt to swipe at my fingers.
“He did.”
I pulled one shoe off and then the other, before dipping a hand into my jacket pocket.
“Here,” I opened my palm to reveal one of the little parcels. “Do you want some?”
“What is it?”
“Almost certainly not speed.”
Her laughter vanished.
“Have you taken cocaine?”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think it’s done anything.”
Her eyes rose in stung disappointment.
“Why did you do it?”
“Because… why not?”
“Because it’s just not the kind of thing you do. You said you were going to look after me.”
“But it was Ambrose.”
“God, Killian. Please don’t turn into one of them.”
Her eyes fell to her knees. Pushing myself up off the floor, I said, “Anyway, since when have you been Miss bloody Goody Two Shoes?”
“I’m not Miss Goody Two Shoes…”.
A flash of dirty light glinted from her crucifix.
“Oh God,” I said. “Of course. Kathryn the Christian.”
I watched in prickly confusion as she sprang to her feet and marched back into the noise. After a minute spent trying to gather myself together, I followed in her general direction in my socks, ordering a triple Bells at the bar, before heading back to the bathroom to start on the next wrap of cocaine.
I could feel it as I walked back downstairs. This was it – the best night of my life. Kathryn would be all right. Everything would be all right. I was donating my jacket to an elderly man with a large golden medallion in the shape of a chop when, around the corner, came Max.
“On your way to the snort traps?” I said, following him back up the steps.
He glanced at my socks and smiled in a way that was almost friendly.
“Shouldn’t you be going to bed?” he said.
He was wearing a velvet bow tie, his shirt collar baggy on his cadaverous neck, the legs beneath his trousers so bony that the material hung from his waist as if he was on stilts. Enjoying a sudden rush of wellbeing, I reached up and put my arm around his shoulder.
“Max,” I said, grinning. “Come on, Max Mann, man. Let’s stop all this. Let’s be friends, eh? Hey, ‘Max Mann’ – is that a made-up name? Because if it is, it’s not a very good one, is it?”
He looked, anxiously, over his shoulder.
“Come on, man, we’re equals now,” I said. “It’s over. Let’s just get on with making great food and forget all this rivalry. Why are we tearing strips off each other?”
He nudged backwards, so that my arm slipped loose.
“I really have no idea what you’re talking –
”
“Yes, you do,” I said. “All this! Leaking bollocks to the press–”
His face tilted in, just a fraction, just enough to gather the best of the darkness that was hovering about the stairs. The shadows worked gratefully over his lines and pock-marks and deep grey bags.
“You better watch what you accuse me of. If I find out I’m being slandered, lied about, I shall have no choice but to notify my solicitor.”
“Stop talking to me like that, Max. Why are you talking to me like that? I’ve proved myself to you. I can do it, Max. I can cook. I’m tough enough. I’m as tough as you.” I raised my arms and announced proudly, “I am a turnspit dog!”
Max whispered, “You’re poisoning your guests with some kind of additive and you’ll get found out. People aren’t as stupid as you think. There will be proof. And the instant that there is, you’re finished. I’ll make sure of it. So make the most of your stolen moment. It won’t last.”
“You’re telling me I won’t last? Do you have any idea what people say about your food? Guinea-fowl and mango? People are laughing at you, Max. Have you seen Spitting Image lately? They think you’re hilarious. Take off your flared trousers, old man, and smell the future.” I made a show of hungrily sniffing the air. “Hmmmm, smells like butter.” I paused to feign the arrival of a sudden realisation. “Oh, but hang on, Max, you knew that didn’t you? Do you think your mate Bill might be interested to hear how much of Echire’s finest is used at King?”
He pushed me, with outstretched fingers, on the throat and I fell against the black painted wall behind me. Glancing quickly to check that we were alone, he spoke again, his voice in full whisper: “You have no idea how fragile your existence is. You have no idea how close you are to over.”
“Tell me I’m talented.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Tell me I’m talented.”
“You’re ungrateful.”
“Tell me I’m talented.”
“You’re needy. You’re overrated. You’re a fraud.”
My head rang with it. My eyes began to swell.
“I’m not,” I shouted. “I deserve it.”
