Which brings me to that memorable Saturday night.
The kitchen was already at bursting point. I was on wash-up with two Mexicans, but the chefs were a man down. Anton had done the unmentionable: he had phoned in sick. I remembered thinking it had better be terminal.
Then, at about eight o’clock, from the far corner of the kitchen, came a guttural scream. Now, injuries were nothing new in Fontaines, in fact, they were almost welcomed, worn as a badge of honour, the more stomach-churning the better.
So I knew when I heard the roar that this was serious. Raising my head from the sink I saw Louis standing, white as sheet, cleaver in one hand, severed little finger in the other.
Tony strode down from where he’d been checking the dishes as they were handed to the waiting staff.
“Fuck!” he roared.
Next thing, he shoved Louis towards the back door. “You go, get seen to.”
“Should I go with him, Chef?” Jermaine the pastry chef stepped forward.
“Is it his fucking tongue?” roared Tony.
“Eh, no, Chef,” spluttered Jermaine, retreating rapidly back to his station.
Frederick, the front of house manager, ran to ring for an ambulance.
Tony looked wildly around the kitchen.
“You!” He stabbed a huge index finger in my direction.
I looked around, hoping in vain there was someone in close proximity to me that he was gesticulating at.
“Me?” I stuttered.
“Yes, you!” he hollered. “Get a hat and an apron and get back here. You can do starters – Juan, you move up to the broiler – now everyone else back to work!”
He had turned his back and was striding back up to his station.
I stood speechless.
He turned.
I ran. Quickly.
Three and a half hours later, service was over. Two hundred and eighty covers. I sat in the staff room, unable to move. My clothes were saturated, the veins in my forehead throbbed relentlessly and my fingertips were so burnt and raw that the FBI would never be able to print me.
There was a noise behind me.
I looked up to see Fat Tony enter the room. I made to get up but I couldn’t – my poor body had seized. Luckily he gestured to me to stay sitting.
He pulled a chair over and sat down facing me. Too close for comfort.
It was just me and him. Like that time when I had shared a lift in Bloomingdales with Brooke Shields, I could think of nothing intelligent to say.
“That – was – mental,” I eventually managed.
Fat Tony shrugged. “It was good, yes.”
“Good? It was horrendous!”
Fat Tony shrugged again, then looked at me.
“Vat is your name?” he asked, lowering his giant head towards mine.
“Holly,” I said warily, his huge bloodshot eyes and dripping forehead far too close for comfort.
“Vell, Polly, vat would you have recommended? That we close for the evening because one stupid foocker couldn’t keep his pinkie from under his tools?”
“Well, no not exactly but –”
“But nothing, Polly, but nothing!” He moved even closer and I could smell his intensity. “The true mark of a man is not the trouble he gets into, but the way he gets himself out of it. You remember that, Polly – it will get you far.”
He heaved his giant bulk from his seat and went to leave. At the door he turned.
“You vant to be a chef?”
I shook my head silently.
“Pity,” he muttered, then turned and left.
No, I didn’t want to be a chef, but I never, ever forgot Fat Tony’s words. It wasn’t the trouble you got into, but the way you got out of it.
I was slap-bang in the middle of the weeds now, but like that fateful Saturday night in Fontaines, now was not the time to analyse how I got there, but to start to plan how in hell I was going to get out.
Chapter 13
Resolutely I got up from the couch. Three days were enough to know that while Amber was engrossed in her DVD right now, it was unlikely that this respite would last very long.
The thing was, I just didn’t know where to start.
A sudden craving for coffee reminded me of the way I started most projects. For a second I thought longingly of the home-roasted coffee in Abraco on East 7th Street, before remembering that I was standing in the kitchen of your average house in your average small Irish town. Without opening the cupboard door, I knew that all I would find would be tea bags, and plenty of them, or even worse a dried-out half-jar of instant coffee . . .
That’s where I could start.
I scrabbled through the cluttered worktop, looking for a pen and paper. A few minutes later, chewed pencil and a torn envelope in hand, I sat down.
I needed a list and I needed it now.
At the top I printed neatly: SHOPPING LIST
And below that: decent coffee
Let’s face it, there was no chance of making it through this without it. I smiled briefly as I wondered how long Mark’s terracotta jar would last under my jurisdiction.
The thing was, the maximum amount of time I’d be here would be six weeks. Six weeks – how bad could it be? And I really hoped that I’d manage to meet up with Oliver by the weekend. If I found out then that he wanted nothing to do with me, I wouldn’t even be staying six weeks.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
It couldn’t.
Pulling myself out of yet another Oliver daydream, I looked around the kitchen. The grim reality was that I couldn’t last even one more day in such a mess, let alone six weeks.
While I might not have seen much of my illustrious new employer in the last few days, there were signs of him everywhere. He had clearly swept through the kitchen like a whirlwind earlier that morning. It was actually possible to pinpoint his exact movements by the used teabag stuck precariously to the side of the sink, the toast crumbs on the counter and the crummy knife still embedded in the butter. Nice.
And it didn’t stop there.
Granted some of it was my responsibility: the breakfast things were still caked in half-eaten cereal, and even Amber’s beaker still sat upside down in a puddle of juice on the floor.
But it went further than that. The Formica worktops were sagging under an indescribable amount of clutter, most of it of veterinary origin. Bundles of periodicals balanced carefully on dog-eared docket books, and bottles of multi-coloured potions nestled side by side with the half-eaten loaves of white bread. The microwave was in danger of toppling off the work top with the volume of unopened (or opened and hastily reclosed) post that was stuffed behind it. And on top of the washing machine was the biggest load of laundry I had ever seen. In fact it loomed so large that I had my doubts that any of the clothes at the bottom would actually still fit anyone, let alone be still in fashion.
The thing was, even if this kitchen was spotless it would still look cluttered. There were handmade pots on the windowsill overflowing with now-dead herbs. Chunky woven baskets held a combination of eggs, tape measures and half chewed pencils. Art was obviously a great love of Emma’s as it appeared that every single scribble the children had ever created was still stuck to the door of the fridge.
Just as I could feel my resolve starting to droop, my mobile rang.
Could it be Oliver?
No, it was my mother.
“Holly! I tried your office extension just now, but I just got a funny tone.”
Damn. I had said nothing to my family of the more recent developments in my life. It had all happened so quickly. I scrabbled frantically to remember what country she thought I was in.
Ireland. I thought.
I needed to think fast. At least she hadn’t phoned the main number, given that the Dublin office was probably still under the illusion that I was back in New York. I wasn’t really sure how long it would take for news of my ‘family emergency’ to filter through.
“No, Mum, I’m out on a job
at the minute.”
“Oh, I thought you said you were spending this week at your desk?”
Gosh, there must a lull in Marsha’s achievements for her to remember that kind of detail about me. I’d had to remind her I was sitting my finals at Stern practically every day for six months.
“Yeah, well, I’m subcontracted out to a company for the next few weeks . . .” I scrabbled frantically for a plausible story. “It’s kind of like I’m working for a client.”
“Oh.” For a moment she sounded impressed, but then added, “They didn’t want you themselves then.”
Now that’s the Mum I know and love.
“Well, of course they did, but it’s a very good client, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
So there! I almost snipped, before remembering the truth . . .
“Oh.” She still wasn’t sure.
Time to change the subject.
“So how are all the others?”
“Well, Marsha and Steve have gone to Florida with the kids for a few weeks, and then Marsha is bringing the kids home here for Christmas –”
Ha, I knew there had to be a reason for her to think of ringing me . . .
I walked with the phone to my ear to the door of the TV room in the hope that Amber wasn’t up to anything death-defying. But to my astonishment she was still glued to the TV. That Barney show was a miracle.
“And you know Chad is coming too, so that just leaves you . . .”
“And Kelly?” I interjected, ducking quickly back from the TV-room door as the Purple One burst into song again.
“Yes, Kelly too of course, though she’s in Paris at the moment.”
Aha, that explained the overseas ringtone.
“Didn’t she mail you?”
Yes, probably to my GS email account.
“She was talking about meeting you in Dublin.”
Shit.
“Maybe even staying a few days with you?”
Double shit.
“But now she’s to go to that trade show in London.”
Thank God. My life stopped flashing before me.
Though if I had to explain my current situation to any of my siblings, Kelly would have been my preferred choice. We’d been thick as thieves as children but, in a funny way, even though she was younger than me by a year, Kelly always seemed to need to mother me.Whereas the others, if they knew of my present predicament, would just roll their eyes and say they really hadn’t expected any different from me, Kelly would just look at me with big teary, soulful eyes and tell me how I deserved so much more. To be fair, I’m not sure which would be worse.
“So when are you going back?”
Not this again.
“I’m not sure, Mum – a month, six weeks maybe. I’ll know more after the weekend – I mean, in the next week or so,” I hastily corrected myself. “Look, I’d really better go, I’ve a conference call with Brussels in fifteen minutes, and I need to talk to a few people first.”
“Oh, okay – don’t forget your brother is on the Late Late this –”
But I’d hung up. I really couldn’t cope with her today.
Sitting at the table I lowered my head into my hands. It was a good job she couldn’t see me now. All those years of trying to prove her wrong, wasted.
Stop! I banged the table with my fist.
I had to be positive about this. I would somehow track Oliver down so that he could see me across a crowded bar, and promptly burst with happiness. So much so that he would then drag me from the bar, to the nearest hotel room (or car, or bus stop – I was warming to this) and I might never even have to come back to this dreadful house, with its dreadful children and horrible father.
In fact, given that this scenario was so eminently possible, it was the least I could do to bring some order to the house so that my replacement would have some chance of survival.
I did this kind of thing with companies all the time.
Why should an untidy house be any different?
Resolutely I stood up.
Get off your ass, Holly Green – get this place sorted, get your man back then get to hell out of here.
I started to work.
Chapter 14
Two hours and three Barney DVD changes later, the kitchen looked worse than ever. Tidying had had a snowball effect. As I moved about I kept finding more and more that had to be done. Cupboards full of out-of-date food, drawers that once opened spewed their contents in such a way that made closing them again virtually impossible. I felt like binning every useless hand-woven teacloth and crochet oven glove that I came across but frustratingly had to be mindful that their owner was no longer with us.
And of course it wasn’t just the kitchen that needed urgent attention. I had walked slowly around the entire house to assess the full extent of the situation.
It was a not a big house by any stretch of the imagination but yet should have had ample room for such a small family. Downstairs was the kitchen/dining room, a TV room and, behind a locked door, what I assumed was a “good” sitting room.
Upstairs was the master bedroom, Jamie’s room, another smaller bedroom and a nursery for Amber. I was housed in a converted loft, beside which was jammed a tiny attic for storage. However, once I’d established on arrival that the wireless broadband network stretched that far, this arrangement suited me just fine.
No, it wasn’t the lack of space that was the problem, but rather the clutter that trickled out of every room. There were clothes everywhere, bundles ran into other bundles and it was no longer possible to see where the clean heaps ended and the dirty began. The mere fact that every bed was strewn with a beautifully handmade but hideously gaudy patchwork quilt did not show the already small rooms in the best light, nor did the fact that every room was painted a different dark sludgy colour, the ox-blood red of the hall, the olive green of the TV room, even the kitchen was a dark midnight blue, enough to put anyone into a gloomy mood.
The TV room was strewn with toys. The carpet was splotched with stains and encrusted food and tiny multi-coloured plastic bricks crunched underfoot no matter how carefully I made my way from one side to another.
I was almost sorry I’d started. The only break I’d taken was to shoehorn Amber into the buggy again so that I could collect Jamie from school and right now he too was plonked in front of the TV with a cheese sandwich.
But, it had to be said, I was really starting to warm to my project. Only falling short of actually writing Terms of Reference for myself, my idea of treating it like a problem companyhad really grown legs. The shopping list now ran to three pages, which in turn looked nothing compared to my to-do list, which I’m proud to say featured several spider diagrams.
As I sat cross-legged on the floor with the entire contents of the under-the-sink cupboard scattered around me on the floor, a voice suddenly boomed across the kitchen.
“What the hell is going on here?”
From my position on the kitchen floor I looked up. Mark Fielding, a grinning Amber on one hip, glowered down at me.
“I’m sorry, I-I didn’t hear you come in,” was all I could stammer.
“That much is obvious.”
Wincing at the sarcasm, I scrambled to my feet, furious I’d been caught at such a disadvantage.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting you home just yet.”
Like not for another six hours, going on your normal working routine.
“Let me make something clear, Holly,” his eyes were like blue steel as he glared at me, “it’s never a good sign when someone tells you they weren’t expecting you home yet. I will come home, when, and as often, as I like, so if you are to stay here it would do you good to remember that.”
I was so stunned by the unfairness of his attitude I could feel tears prickling at the back of my eyes.
“And as for this chaos?” He waved an arm around the kitchen. “I can’t imagine for a second what you were thinking.”
Okay, that was enough. Insulting me was one thin
g, insulting my afternoon’s work, a whole other issue.
I drew myself up to my full height.
“Well, Mr Fielding, I’ll tell you exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking that it might be nice for all of us if this kitchen was a little more organised. That maybe you might prefer to be able to open a drawer or cupboard without having its contents puked over your head every time. That, as you obviously don’t intend to ever deal with that pile of post, we might come up with a different place to store it so that the chance of the microwave falling on one of the children’s heads isn’t so high. That maybe you weren’t intending eating all of the out-of-date food that’s lying around and that maybe, just maybe, it might be a better idea to keep your veterinary paraphernalia in a more suitable location!”
He glared at me but I matched him, eyeball to eyeball, before continuing.
“And yes, it doesn’t look much at the moment, but that’s because it was such a goddamn mess to start off with. Which leads me to another thing, Mr Fielding. It would do you good to remember that, if I am to stay here, I will expect order to be kept on the house, and any changes I make to be adhered to.”
He had the grace to rein in his glare momentarily at my outburst but recovered quickly enough to bark back with, “Well, maybe to facilitate your bringing order to my house, it might be an idea for me to take the children out for a while. Clearly their supervision is hindering your effectiveness.”
His tone didn’t faze me, I had dealt with worse than him before and, if it was sarcasm he wanted, I was more than able to dish it out.
“Well, that would be very helpful, Mr Fielding, perhaps you might bring those bags to the launderette on your way and I’ll be needing cash for that shopping list. I’m not sure that the €3.50 in the jar will accommodate my current needs. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
I turned back to the sink, my hands shaking.The whole altercation had stunned me but, now that I had time to think, I couldn’t help wondering if I had overstepped some kind of boundary? Maybe I should have asked him first before I tore his kitchen asunder?I had no idea what nannies were meant to do. Should I have just sat on my ass and watched television for the week? Who’d have thought it would be this complicated?
Between You and Me Page 10
