by Will Storr
Max darkened, suddenly provoked. “Non.” He dismissed me with a small, limp wave. “Go with Andy.”
* * *
I followed Andy into the pastry area, watching his bowed, slightly bouncy legs as they took me to the far end of the kitchen, around the corner from the sink where the fish was washed and de-scaled. I was effectively alone with him, amongst trays of empty pastry boats, a batch of freshly rinsed cumquats lined up on paper towels like miniature suns and, hanging from a shelf, tonight’s special instructions – four birthdays and a golden wedding anniversary.
“So what do you want me to do?” I said.
He picked up his spatula from where he’d left it, next to the cumquats.
“Nothing at all. I want you here, out of harm’s way.”
It was having a strange effect on me, being back at King. My limbs felt gangly and awkward. My hands couldn’t decide where to settle. Suddenly, I felt my age.
“How’s Kathryn?” I said.
“I’ve not really seen her,” he said. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but she’s barely spoken to anyone. She’s with her mum today, I think.”
I couldn’t let myself be distracted by thoughts of Kathryn. I pictured those dogs, working the wheel.
“Ambrose has told me to help out on sauces tonight,” I said, “so I might not be able to be in pastry for lo–”
He interrupted me. “You’re staying here.”
His environment had a magnifying effect on him. He appeared an absolute master of his workspace; as if the boundary between him and the kitchen was merely academic.
“Oh, you don’t still believe those stories about me drugging people, do you?” I said. “It’s like a conspiracy theory. Come on, mate,” I smiled chummily. “You’ll be accusing me of faking the moon landings next.”
He didn’t move. “If you try anything,” he said, “I promise, I will make sure you regret it.”
“Give over, Andy,” I said. I put my hands on my hips. “Come off it, mate.”
“With my contacts in the press,” he said, “I could ruin your reputation for ever. Don’t forget that.”
I gave him a small, dismissive laugh.
“That’s funny, is it?” he said. “You saw that Bill Hastings piece? The News of the World?” He gave a satisfied nod before adding, almost reluctantly, “On Max’s instructions, of course.”
I rubbed my eyes, resignedly and said, simply, “Cunt.” I thought for a moment, as Andy became distracted by the tumble of flies that had invaded the space over his station. “And I bet it was you that leaked about Max too, wasn’t it?” I said, as he shooed them off. “When I was at King? You’re on a little power trip with all your journo mates, that’s what this is all about. I’m sure it’s very helpful, having all those contacts. The problem with you is that you don’t care about anything but your career.”
He giggled as if lightly amused by some passing gibberish.
“How dare you think you can cheat your way to the top? Do you have any idea at all how hard I’ve worked to get here? How hard Max has worked? How hard we’ve all worked?”
I took a step closer and lowered my voice. I would have to be careful.
“It’s about justice. Everyone thinks he’s so nice, ‘The Gentleman Chef’, but he’s evil.”
“But haven’t you noticed? No one’s leaving. We all stay here, don’t we? Do you know why? We’re loyal to him. One hundred per cent. We might bitch about him. We might hate him at the end of a rough service. But the truth is, we’d fucking die for him.”
Above and between our words could be heard the delicious music of the chefs of King. That they made it so perfectly without me felt like an insult. He was right, wasn’t he? They loved him.
“They hate him,” I said. “Every one of them. You don’t give a shit about Max. You’re not loyal to him; he’s just your leg-up to the next kitchen. You told tales in the press about him, for Christ’s sake! Nice little thrill, was it, seeing it in the paper?” I shook my head. “And anyway, all he’s doing is training another army of psychos who will open their own kitchens and then bully anyone they don’t like into giving up. He’s despicable. He’s a virus.”
Andy leaned forward, his lip curling spitefully, exposing his yellowy teeth.
“You just don’t get it, do you, Killian?” he said. “You’re the bad guy. You’re the bad guy.”
I walked past him slowly, feigning confusion, and began washing my hands at a small sink, letting the fine little bubbles of soft warm water run soothingly over my skin.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “You’ve got some weird things in your head, mate.”
With that, we began working and continued in silence, preparing soufflés and baking meringues. At about twenty to eight that evening, there was a sudden drop as Max clapped three times.
“H-he’s here. The inspector. Table 7.”
Soon afterwards, I heard the unmistakable sound of Max at full hiss at the top of the kitchen. I peered around the corner. Poor Carlo. He was getting it again. There was a queue of four waiters bunched up at the pass, none of whom seemed sure which trays they should be taking, all of them too terrified to interrupt and ask. I said, to no response, “I’ve never seen it like this. It’s a mess. Is this what’s it’s been like?” I had to do it now. Even if I had to physically fight Andy, I had to do it now.
“I need the toilet,” I said. “You’re not going to stop me going to the toilet.” He didn’t lift his head from where he was bending over his tray of kiwi marzipan petits fours.
“Two minutes, and I’m breaking down the door.”
I paced around the corner, past the washing-up area where Danno the pots man was aiming the flexible steel hose at a stack of heat-warped baking trays, out of the door and into the room beneath the stairs where Max and Patrick had given me my palate test. In amongst the cleaning products and miscellaneous mops and traps there was, I remembered, a box of spare pepper grinders. I closed the door, switched on the light, and fumbled noisily about the shelves. The fat plastic packets and metal cans and cardboard boxes were seemingly frozen in disapproving silence as I hunted.
It took too long to find them – they’d been moved to a bottom shelf, next to an old split case of damp-damaged scourers. Cursing silently, I unscrewed the top of a grinder, my eyes continually darting to the shut door as I tipped a pile of Cauter seeds into my palm. In the book I’d found in the attic, it had said that these dark little balls – which looked exactly like half-sized peppercorns, bar a slight purple tint – were what caused a “madness of the body”, whatever that was. There were nine or ten of the pellets within each of the herb’s spiny flowers and I had no idea what they would do as I filled the grinder and slipped out of the cupboard. I wasn’t even wondering: my rational mind was still in its perfectly silent state.
Corralling all lessons I’d ever learned about remaining unnoticed, I crept back into the kitchen. I could tell that it was approaching its point of maximum stress. Like a ship’s hull at the height of a storm, you could almost hear the walls creaking and groaning with the pressures that were bearing down on it. Up at the meat station, Patrick was a porcine hunk of sweat, fat and acne leaning over his sauté pans. He looked barely more alive than the animals he was cooking, the straining little white-heads poking like poisonous mushrooms through the fine copper hairs of his half-grown moustache. As I approached him, I realised that there were a couple of silvery flies in the air about me. No, there were more than that. Four, five of them, at least. Ignoring the insects, I scoped the little pinch-pots of sea salt and freshly cracked pepper he kept nearby and carefully knocked them onto the floor with my elbow. He was in such a well of concentration that he could only find the space to mumble, “Twat.”
I tutted showily at my apparent clumsiness and ran with the empty receptacles to the store where the spare salt and pepper were kept. I refilled his pots with salt and a half-pepper, half-Cauter mix and placed them gently back at his side, before doing a small tour of
the kitchen, helpfully refilling the salt and pepper of all the chefs, being generous with my grinds of the Dor seeds. By the time I was finished, I knew that hardly a dish would now go out that didn’t have at least a dusting of my ancestor’s herb either on it or in it.
Before making my way to the exit, I palmed a couple of shredded Hindeling leaves and added them to a fresh brew of peppermint tea which I brought to Max. I placed the pot down on the pass and smiled at the sight of him sending his polar stare into the two guinea-fowl with caramel and mango that had just arrived in front of him.
“I’ve given Andy a help on pastry,” I said, as he towelled a fingerprint off the side of a plate. “He was in trouble for a bit back there, believe it or not. Everything’s motoring along perfectly now. And I’ve had a quick tour of the kitchen. You don’t need my help at all. You’ve got an amazing team here.” I began to untie my apron strings as he gave the dishes one final squinting examination. “You’ll be fine, Max,” I said. “With the Michelin guy, I mean. Easy.”
I thought he was going to turn away, but he looked straight at me.
“You think?” he said. I felt myself automatically formulating a response that assumed he was being sarcastic. But something stopped me. “Yeah,” I said, carefully. “Yes. For sure.”
And then, watching the waitress pick up the tray, he wiped his hands against themselves and muttered, “Yes, well, good. Thanks.”
“Sorry?”
He faced me, his rain-coloured eyes hopeful and open. The oxygen vanished from my throat.
“Thank you, Killian. For your help.”
I had this insane urge to hold him, to push my head into his chest. I put my arm out to pick the teapot back up, but the maître d’ swooped in first and grabbed it, intending to pour him a cup. My hand lingered over the spout for a moment, enjoying the pain of the steam. I left, as quickly as was possible, before I had to watch him drink.
51
I stalked out of the blue double doors, through the darkness of Stephen Mews and crossed Gresse Street with my head down. Hanging in the shadows by the post office over the road, a freezing wind blew around my face and, in it, I could smell cold concrete and the vague sweetly spiced waft of a distant cigarette, above the sickly yellow pong of fat and scorch that rose from my skin.
I had to wait, to watch. Above the silhouetted rectangular hedges I could see two oblongs of golden light – the windows into the dining room, the occasional shape of a beautiful waitress gliding with magnificent sex and ease around the tables, bending over the diners to serve. It was about half past eight when I became aware of the first strange noise. I crept forward, back over the road, so I could hear better. It was like a great, ribitting frog. I peered up at the window. An overweight man in a pinstripe suit and braces had begun hiccupping violently. An elderly woman at Table 3 looked on at him, making a great show of her shock at his apparent rudeness. Then, she let out a hiccup so powerful that it appeared to pull her a little way off her seat. Her narrow hand sprang to her mouth as her dining partner reached over to help her. It seemed that she was struggling for breath. I stepped back, nervously.
Shortly afterwards, a middle-aged diner in a tweed jacket and plum trousers stood up abruptly and walked, with all the haste that appearances would permit, towards the bathroom. Did he run the final few yards? Then a woman in a sequinned dress followed him. I watched as the initial intermittent hurry for the toilets became a small charge. A black vase fell on a tablecloth, spilling its water and partially ejecting a white orchid. A fork bounced onto the carpet. A chair tipped back.
Soon, the polite and sporadic disarray had deteriorated into general pandemonium. There were hiccups and dry heaving and demands for service and cries of outrage all merging together, discordant and confusing and muffled on the other side of the window. There were hands over mouths and torsos doubling up and then vomit – livid mauve-and-dun-coloured pulses of it – pouring between fat knuckles and delicate jewelled fingers, hitting crystal glasses and drenching cutlery. The waitresses reared in horror. Some began rushing around with towels, others crouched down by those who appeared especially helpless, but most just ran for the shelter of the kitchen. A woman in a peppermint-green skirt charged towards the bathroom in her heels, pushing a waitress out of the way, a light stain appearing on the back of her dress. All was hysteria. All was frenzy. All was terror. The air in the room had become hectic with hurtling insects. They appeared to be revelling in the bedlam, dancing above heads and settling greedily onto human fluids. I saw a man, dining alone, his face pale, his nose with an aristocratic bent, his suit ill-fitting old corduroy. He was at Table 7. The inspector! He looked about the room with mad alarm and then hunched forwards, as if struck powerfully on the neck, and exhaled a bright flume of bile. And then, a face in the background, staring in ashen despair directly at him. Max.
I pulled myself back into the shadows and retreated across the road to the safety of the dark post office. The restaurant’s front door opened. A woman in a short red skirt burst out as if kicked from behind. She pushed her head as far over the steel railing as she could and held the base of her neck as a long hose of vomit emerged from her stretched mouth. It came and it came and it came and she fell to her knees, curled up like a baby lamb, as the eruptions faltered and she began coughing up phlegmy gobs of thick slurry, each one accompanied by gross abdominal tremors. I watched with fascinated detachment as she retched and whimpered, too exhausted to cry, too distressed to care about her tall stiletto tumbling down the steps, her chin coated in a sticky beard of filth, her hand grabbing weakly at her bottom, which – judging by her movements – was also now expelling liquid in curious pumping little spurts. Her sobs came out in time with her breaths and only when she wasn’t desperately heaving out more of the weird fudgy matter from her throat. Soon, she began making a mysterious and inhuman groaning sound. Flies landed on her face. She was too weak to brush them away.
Ten minutes later, a taxi pulled up and a photographer jumped out. There were sirens. An ambulance. Then another, their red and blue lights stroking the surface of Ambrose’s upstairs office window and the walls of the Bricklayer’s Arms and the craning faces of the curious drinkers that were now bubbling through its doors. I crept away in the orange-cloaked darkness, tiny in the vast city, its endless glowing web of streets crawling out around me in all directions, all over the country and all over the floating world, and me just a pale nothing, just a slip of skin and bone, alone in the anonymous quiet.
52
I arrived home to find Dor Cottage squatting in its square of night like a fat, satisfied toad, the moonlight reflecting in the dark eye of its attic window. It sat there and watched me, that great form of age and gathering mayhem, as I climbed out of the car and into the restless wind, the elms creaking around me. I stood there for a moment and tried to stare it down. I shouted, “Go on, then!” in its direction and paused nervously to see if anything would happen. It remained silent, scowling, insulted by the weather.
I let myself in and sat alone in the kitchen with an unscrewed bottle of Bell’s whisky. The light laid itself over the contours of the glass and swam, as if panicking, inside the liquid. There was a thud from upstairs. I poured another large glass and drank it down. Nothing happened for a while. A repetitive knocking noise came from the lounge. It was the wind. It must be the wind. The sound abruptly stopped. I continued to drink. Feeling the whisky working its soft magic, I crawled on top of the table. I wouldn’t take this. This was my house. I pulled myself to my feet and roared down at the space where she had stood.
“Aunty! Where are you? I can hear you.” I paused. Nothing. “Please, Aunty! Aunty! I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I need you!”
A fly buzzed past and landed on my foot. Shaking it off, I climbed down from the table, lowering myself with unsteady legs. Another, different noise floated down from upstairs. Low, like the murmur of a faraway crowd.
I took a long draft of the whisky and waited, wondering what to do. I loo
ked at the range, its dead black mass under the chimney, the holes where the spit used to be still visible in the fireplace walls. I looked at the surface of the old oaken table, the lines and notches that I’d known as a boy and that Dorothy must surely have known as a girl. I looked at the shelves and the jars and the prongs and the shredders and the pots and the small bale of drying Earl’s Leaf on the sheets of newspaper that I’d gathered last week and hadn’t managed to get through. I looked at everything in the room except the place that seemed to be inviting me; taunting me.
I stepped forward and peered into the darkness over the stairs. Another fly startled me, emerging from up there at speed and coming directly at me. I ducked to the side and followed its path as it disappeared towards the lounge. I wondered how many of them were in here, in this cottage? Studying me in their skittering way, from the beams and the cracks in the mortar? There was another noise from upstairs. It seemed to be coming from the attic.
I began climbing. When I finally reached the corridor, the murmuring had become even louder. It had a mechanistic quality about it. A sense of teeming. I came to a halt beneath the attic door.
It was creaking; groaning with a kind of weight. I looked up. Something came from the gap between the door and its frame. It popped out, darted through the air and went for the stairs. A fly. I squinted, looking closer. There were more of them: flies squeezing themselves out of the loft, their legs hauling their silvery bodies through and then, as they achieved their freedom, accelerating suddenly.
I retreated back to the lounge and tried to sleep in Dorothy’s armchair, but ended up just drinking most of the whisky. I was roused from a bleary daze by the sound of the phone ringing, drunk enough that, momentarily, I didn’t know what the noise was. I picked up the receiver.
“Kathryn?”
There was a sound amidst the static: a kind of swallowed gasp.
“Ambrose?”
“It’s sad news, Killian,” he said. “Terrible, awful news. I, er…”
