by Will Storr
“Killian?” she said. “If that’s you, you have to stop calling.”
I tried to hear every detail of what was happening in her world; to absorb her through the receiver. I didn’t move at all as I took in her soft crying.
“Killian, if you do this again, I’ll call the police. I don’t want to, but I will.”
The phone clicked off and gave me its heartless, electro-mechanic hum. I sat, in the room, and closed my eyes. Twelve minutes later, Ambrose called.
“I heard there were some issues yesterday?” he said. “With the food?”
I leaned forward as my stomach tightened painfully.
“Only a slight… Who told you?”
“Someone with your best interests at heart,” he replied, a note of don’t-start defensiveness pushing in his voice. “So what happened?”
“My eye was off the ball,” I said. “It was my fault. Me and Kathryn–”
“And that’s all?” Silence. “There was no other problem? Nothing you want to tell me about? Nothing I might find out about by some other means? Nothing that might damage my business? Nothing at all?”
“That’s right.”
“What?”
“Nothing at all.”
“I don’t want everything to fall to pieces now that you’ve fired Andrew.”
“It was the right decision.”
“You’d do well to remember who owns Glamis, Killian.”
I glanced at the pile of framed reviews that I’d had removed from the walls of the corridor and that still sat on my office floor, leaning against a filing cabinet. I was struck by the staggering height of the pile.
“You’d do well to remember who’s made it world famous, Ambrose.”
“Well, it’s not going to stay that way for long on the basis of last night’s food.”
I noticed, too, how dusty the precarious stack had become. It was amazing, the speed with which dust could gather; how remorselessly life shed its dead material.
“That won’t happen again,” I said. “That’s a promise.”
“Look,” said Ambrose. “I have no idea what’s going on between you and Kathryn and, frankly, I’m not interested. You mustn’t let all this personal idiocy get in the way of your success. You must remain focused on the positive things. We just can’t have this. Especially not now. For God’s sake, between you and Max, the situation is–”
“Max?”
“Oh, his blasted girlfriend has done a runner.”
“Has she?”
“Of course she has!”
“But he didn’t really give a crap about her, did he? He was just keeping up appearances. She was pregnant and everything.”
“Oh, if only that were true, Killian. You couldn’t be more wrong. Max adored her. He was besotted. Obsessed. The first girlfriend who wasn’t a pushover, that’s what I think.”
“Where’s she gone?”
“Who knows?” he sighed. “Back to Russia, more than likely. Max is crushed, bless him. Between you and me, he’s barely capable of leading that kitchen and these are important days. Critical. That’s what I’m calling about, actually. I’ve just heard – the monks of Michelin will be at King any day. L’Inspecteur from the Avenue de Breteuil. The last thing I need is for the place to fall apart. In fact, I might need you to do me a favour.”
48
Ambrose’s favour didn’t come for another two weeks. During that time, I had to sack Drusilla. She kept looking at me. She was spying on me, of course she was – if not for Max, for Ambrose. If not for Ambrose, for the newspapers. Indeed, there was another Bill Hastings exclusive, clearly placed by Max. It excoriated the so-called “aggressive and terrifying” conditions of my kitchen whilst quoting a source “at the heart of Mann’s operation” that described the heavenly conditions enjoyed by his brigade: “If only the young pretender had learned the lessons generously offered by the elder Gent: you don’t have to be a bully to make good food.”
Can there be anyone, in any trade, who has enough ambition to lead their field and yet who doesn’t dance at the very edge of what’s permissible? Ambition itself compels it; insists upon it. And so it was with me. All the pressures of the kitchen coalesced into a sharp beam of fury: this piece of veal; this fillet of cod; this sautéed carrot. When the weight of all the world is focused onto a single badly trimmed broad bean, the effect is indistinguishable from madness.
The fortnight passed in a smear of working and drinking and drugging. Despite what the newspapers implied, I wasn’t having fun. I could sense the shadow of the wave on my back and a part of me wanted to drown.
In the elms, a small clearing. Mary, gagged, faint and soiled. Flames at her feet as the children sang, “Earl’s heart and earl’s leafs and earl’s lusts abounding. Earl’s fires and earl’s grace and earl’s witch is burning.” The finder man called out his charges: “Witchcraft is the product of Carnal Lusts which is in Women Insatiable. Mary Dor did make for the Devil a work of Vile Bewitchment and destroyed the Soul of Full Grown Men by depriving them of Grace, inclining their Minds to inordinate Passions and delivering their Bodies up to the punishments for Sin…”
The silvery flesh flies crawled out from the cracks in the mortar and the cracks in the beams and the dark weight of the attic. They crawled over Mary’s bed and her crucifix. They swarmed over the herbs that were piled on the kitchen table. They tizzed and crackled on the fire, dropping into the glowing coals, a stench like burning hair filling the cottage.
They broke in a great turning cloud above the garden. Flies amongst the elms. Flies over the men and women who had gathered in the forest to watch Mary Dor burn. Flies on their arms and cheeks and necks and covering their children. And as they screamed, flies in their mouths and down their throats and licking the sticky whites of their eyes.
And I saw it all.
And I knew that I was the red and the yellow and the black.
And that black is always death.
49
Before showering, I forced myself to study my face in the mirror. I touched the reddish-purple bags beneath my eyes, the areas of dry skin around my nostrils, the hair-thin network of cuts that extended from the sore edges where my lips met, some freshly descended crumbs from a cocaine nosebleed. I pulled back and took in the entirety of my reflection in all its hollow melancholy – the shaved head, the damaged eyelid, the wax and granite shades of exhaustion. Ninety minutes later, I was behind my desk, studying the news, hunting for references to Max when Ambrose called.
“This is it,” he said, his voice confidential and excited. “I’ve just heard. Michelin. L’Inspecteur. He’s coming to dinner at King tonight.”
“How have you found that out?” I asked.
“I was wondering if you’d mind hopping over to Gresse Street to help out a little,” he said, ignoring my question. “Just for the service.”
I couldn’t quite believe it.
“Oversee the sauces, perhaps,” he continued, more cautiously now. “Just for an hour or two.”
A blur of chefs in white tunics flitted past my open door, like nervous ghosts.
“Okay, so is Max going to come and give me a bit of help when it’s my turn?” I said.
“That’s hardly the point, Killian. Things at King –”
I stood up at my desk, the twisted cable tugging from the receiver and lifting the corner of the telephone off it.
“What about Glamis? What about my Michelin stars? Do you think Max gives one rocky bollock about that?”
“And what about me?”
I sat, slowly, back in my chair, cowed by this rare show of fury.
“Where’s your fucking loyalty, man? Where’s your gratitude? If you want to fuck off and start your own place then be my guest and fuck off. No one’s going to go bankrupt without you, least of all me. We’ll all have simpler, more enjoyable lives without you. You are bringing a downmarket tone to my group as it is. I don’t care what you think of Max. Your ridiculous falling-out is of no interest
to me. But the man is not well at the moment and I am asking you to do a favour for me. Just for one service. Just one. For God’s sake, man, do you realise what it’ll do to him if he doesn’t get his third star? After the year he’s had? Have you even thought about that for one moment? And you know full well that if Glamis isn’t awarded any stars whatsoever it will have no effect on the bottom line. We’ll still be drowning in bookings. It won’t make a scrap of difference to the money we’re making.”
“And the same goes for Max. He’s booked up for months!”
There was a silence.
“Isn’t he?” I said.
Ambrose cleared his throat.
“I think it would be fair to say the winds are, perhaps, shifting just a little.”
“Well, I just can’t believe you’re asking me this.”
“Killian, you’re the best saucier in Europe. Easily. Why wouldn’t I want to tactically deploy my finest employee for the good of the group? And you must realise, it does you no good to put King and its reputation at risk.”
“It doesn’t make any difference to me whatsoever.”
“Killian, you’re not thinking cleverly enough. You’re too hot-headed. I mean Max…” His voice took on an arachnid thinness. “You need to think long term about this. About your future and where it might lead.”
My eyes skittered guiltily about the empty room.
“Two thirty,” he said. “I want you there. Just to support him. Help him along a little.”
I licked my lips with a dry tongue, feeling each crease and blister of their cracked surfaces.
“Two thirty,” I said. “Fine.”
“Oh, and Killian. The Food and Drink people want to come in on Friday. They couldn’t get hold of you, they said. No one at Glamis would return their calls. I told them fine. I take it that that will not be a problem for any reason?”
I could tell, from the way he said it, that the wrong answer now would be dangerous.
“Well–”
“Good. Goodbye.”
I looked at the receiver in the moments after I put it down. I watched as it goaded me and then, not even trying to resist, I picked it back up and phoned Kathryn. She was weeping before she even said hello this time. I listened for a few seconds, then gently hung up.
I sat there, staring at the backs of my hands, my mind comfortably disengaged. I found myself presented with an idea. And I believed it was a good idea – the right idea – because of the silence. For months the noise in my head had been ceaseless: the anxieties would fade in and out, weaving their way between the imagined scenes with Max, the agonising over the herbs, the running of the brigade, the wondering about Dor – all these lines of logic, words moving through wires, conversations held with different versions of myself that would go here and there and back here again and end up, frequently, with one half shouting at the other half and my resorting to rocking in my chair or using the paring knife that I had taken to carrying around in my pocket, with its split little plastic cover over the blade.
I had once read that wind is nature’s restless attempt at filling voids in the atmosphere, and that was just what the noise in my head had come to feel like: great blusters of dissonance that blew around up there. They were my brain’s continual attempts at finding a solution, at thinking its way back to silence. And that’s what I heard, when this idea presented itself. Calm. Peace. Nothing at all.
I looked up as Marco walked past my door.
“Marco!”
He reversed, popping his head in, a strand of curly hair slipping down over his eyes.
“Chef?”
“Something’s come up. Can you take over for the rest of the day?”
“Yes, Chef,” he said. “Not a problem.”
I pulled my coat on, ran to my car and drove back to Dor.
50
I walked past the crates of Perrier and over the discarded ring-pulls that were pressed into the cobbles and checked the inside of my apron pocket one more time. Yes, good. The three ancient gifts of Dor were still there. Then, with just one step, I was inside the music of King once again. In front of me was the line of fretful apprentices, their pink fingers on blue-grey steel surfaces, their blades flashing over basil and chervil and mango and tomato and raspberry and lime. I could sense the wave of thrilled alarm go through them as I passed and headed into that subterranean rectangle of smells and sounds and magic. There they were, all in place, the commis chefs, the first commis, the demi chefs de partie, the chefs de partie, working studiously, precisely, standing with their legs apart so they didn’t have to bend so low over the counter, all of them in that peculiar state of concentrated determination that is so close to anger. The brigade looked so much a part of the kitchen, it was hard to believe that they all had different lives outside of it: different beds, different girlfriends, different histories in different towns.
None of them acknowledged my presence as I walked behind them, past the shelves stacked high with pans and dishes, the hissing stoves, the blue flames surging thickly through blackened steel burners, the dented grill trays, the rows of hanging cleavers and ladles and copper saucepans and the oven with the door that didn’t quite close. If I was to take over this place for Kathryn, I realised we’d probably have a battle with them. But that was okay. If I found that any of these chefs lacked the loyalty to follow their new leader, I knew I had the teeth, the breeding, to deal with them. And, tonight, I had something else. Two pouches of herbs from Dor. It was still unclear to me what their effects might be. All I knew was what the book in the attic had said: that the Hindeling caused a madness of the mind, whilst the Cauter somehow affected the body.
I walked through to the restaurant floor where Max was sitting in a corner, the Maître d’ pouring him a drink from his pot of peppermint tea. He was staring out of the front window as the waiters moved about him ironing fresh tablecloths for the evening. Down by his lap, he was holding a menu, the corners of which were shaking, very slightly, in his hands.
“Chef?” I said. His trance broken, he looked at me for a second, his eyes tracking over me.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Ambrose said –”
“Yes, yes, I know why you’re here.” He put the menu down. “Such confidence he has in me.”
I thought about the charming, confident Gentleman Chef that appeared on Wogan two years ago; the one I’d watched again and again on the video.
“Well, it’s an important night,” I said, softly.
His eyes flickered down. He appeared injured, somehow. Humbled. As bad as I knew his depressed days could be, I’d never seen him like this.
“Chef, I just wanted to say, I know you don’t need me here,” I said. “I don’t know why Ambrose has got it into his head that you do. But I suppose we might as well humour him.”
His eyes tracked the menu. His top pocket, which usually held a brand new biro, hung empty.
“I’ll go and make myself busy,” I said. “I’m sure there’s some prep I can help with. Tangerines or something.”
“No pips,” he said, without looking up.
“No pips,” I replied with a smile.
For the next few hours, I was aware only of the squalls of murmur and laughter that were surely directed at me, gathering and then blowing themselves out as I passed by here and there. I was troubled more by the kitchen’s haunted places: the stations at the cold pass where Kathryn and I had fallen in love; the freezer door where she had told me her name; even the corridor where I had first seen Max, feeling as if his presence was lit by rays that had escaped from heaven.
“Brigade,” said Max when he emerged for service. He stood, leaning against the pass, the shadowless light falling greenish blue over his face. “Y-you all know how important tonight is for us.”
He pointed his finger and panned it across the kitchen. I imagined that every one of his white-robed charges felt as I did – as if his cold, trembling digit had physically touched their skin.
“N-n-no mistakes. I don’t care who you are, how long you’ve worked here. You will vanish. Out in the courtyard. G-gone.”
“Oui, Chef.”
His eyes flickered to each man in a pre-emptive strike of slithery accusation and I knew the fear they were feeling and I was desperate for them to know, despite their apparent contempt for me, that I was here to rescue them from this deathly man. He talked, his voice monotone and dry, and I saw his words as maths, as algebra, as lines of code – cold instructions from a dead machine, every one designed by a bloodless unit with only one function: to win and, by doing so, to make me fail.
When he was finished, I approached him. He seemed to have shut down, momentarily, and was just standing there alone, his limbs on hold, his gaze bland and unattached.
“I know you don’t need any help on sauces, Chef,” I said. “But I could just hang about in the general area, just in case.”
I could feel my heart throb in the scabs on my arms. I knew: it all came down to now.
He glanced towards the cold pass, where the apprentices were working in anxious silence.
“You know, just the benefit of another set of eyes on a service like this. Can’t do any harm.”
He nodded, smally. A fly passed his eye-line. He batted after it rather feebly.
“Yes, fine,” he said. “Bon.”
“Thank you, Chef,” I said.
Then, behind me, a familiar voice: “Actually, I could really do with Killian in pastry tonight, Chef.” It was Andy. I had heard he was back at King, but I was unprepared for the actual sight of him here, happily employed in Max’s kitchen. I felt a jolt of ugly power. He was looking right past me – sleeves up, spatula in hand and a small thumb-smudge of icing sugar on his purposefully set jaw. Max returned Andy’s request with an uncertain frown.
“Don’t you think that would be a bit of a waste, Chef?” I said. “I’m best on sauces.” I glared at Andy. I dared him to speak. “I mean, you know, sauces is what I’m best at. That’s what I’m known for, isn’t it?”
