Collected Short Stories

by Jeffrey Archer

  “And remember other idiot’s finger,” the chef said on completing the lesson and passing the razor-sharp knife back to Mark. “Yours can be next.”

  Mark started gingerly dicing the carrots, then the Brussels sprouts, removing the outer layer before cutting a firm cross in the base. Next he moved on to trimming and slicing the beans. Once again he found it fairly easy to keep ahead of the chef’s requirements.

  At the end of each day, after the head chef had left, Mark stayed on to sharpen all his knives in preparation for the following morning, and would not leave his work area until it was spotless.

  On the sixth day, after a curt nod from the chef, Mark realized he must be doing something half right. By the following Saturday he felt he had mastered the simple skills of vegetable preparation and found himself becoming fascinated by what the chef himself was up to. Although Jacques rarely addressed anyone as he marched around the acre of kitchen except to grunt his approval or disapproval—the latter more commonly—Mark quickly learned to anticipate his needs. Within a short space of time he began to feel that he was part of a team—even though he was only too aware of being the novice recruit.

  On the deputy chef’s day off the following week Mark was allowed to arrange the cooked vegetables in their bowls, and spent some time making each dish look attractive as well as edible. The chef not only noticed but actually muttered his greatest accolade—“Bon.”

  During his last three weeks at the Savoy, Mark did not even look at the calendar above his bed.

  One Thursday morning a message came down from the undermanager that Mark was to report to his office as soon as was convenient. Mark had quite forgotten that it was August 31—his last day. He cut ten lemons into quarters, then finished preparing the forty plates of thinly sliced smoked salmon that would complete the first course for a wedding lunch. He looked with pride at his efforts before folding up his apron and leaving to collect his papers and final pay envelope.

  “Where you think you’re going?” asked the chef, looking up.

  “I’m off,” said Mark. “Back to Coventry.”

  “See you Monday then. You deserve day off.”

  “No, I’m going home for good,” said Mark.

  The chef stopped checking the cuts of rare beef that would make up the second course of the wedding feast.

  “Going?” he repeated as if he didn’t understand the word.

  “Yes. I’ve finished my year and now I’m off home to work.”

  “I hope you found first-class hotel,” said the chef with genuine interest.

  “I’m not going to work in a hotel.”

  “A restaurant, perhaps?”

  “No, I’m going to get a job at Triumph.”

  The chef looked puzzled for a moment, unsure if it was his English or whether the boy was mocking him.

  “What is—Triumph?”

  “A place where they manufacture cars.”

  “You will manufacture cars?”

  “Not a whole car, but I will put the wheels on.”

  “You put cars on wheels?” the chef said in disbelief.

  “No,” laughed Mark. “Wheels on cars.”

  The chef still looked uncertain.

  “So you will be cooking for the car workers?”

  “No. As I explained, I’m going to put the wheels on the cars,” said Mark slowly, enunciating each word.

  “That not possible.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” responded Mark. “And I’ve waited a whole year to prove it.”

  “If I offered you job as commis chef, you change mind?” asked the chef quietly.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because you ’ave talent in those fingers. In time I think you become chef, perhaps even good chef.”

  “No, thanks. I’m off to Coventry to join my mates.”

  The head chef shrugged. “Tant pis,” he said, and without a second glance returned to the carcass of beef. He glanced over at the plates of smoked salmon. “A wasted talent,” he added after the swing door had closed behind his potential protégé.

  Mark locked his room, threw the calendar in the wastepaper basket, and returned to the hotel to hand in his kitchen clothes to the housekeeper. The final action he took was to return his room key to the undermanager.

  “Your pay envelope, your cards, and your withholding tax forms. Oh, and the chef has phoned to say he would be happy to give you a reference,” said the under-manager. “Can’t pretend that happens every day.”

  “Won’t need that where I’m going,” said Mark. “But thanks all the same.”

  He started off for the station at a brisk pace, his small battered suitcase swinging by his side, only to find that each step took a little longer. When he arrived at Euston he made his way to Platform Seven and began walking up and down, occasionally staring at the great clock above the reservations hall. He watched first one train and then another pull out of the station bound for Coventry. He was aware of the station becoming dark as shadows filtered through the glass awning onto the public concourse. Suddenly he turned and walked off at an even brisker pace. If he hurried he could still be back in time to help the chef prepare dinner that night.

  Mark trained under Jacques le Renneu for five years. Vegetables were followed by sauces, fish by poultry, meats by pâtisserie. After eight years at the Savoy he was appointed second chef, and had learned so much from his mentor that regular patrons could no longer be sure when it was the maître chef de cuisine’s day off. Two years later Mark became a master chef, and when in 1971 Jacques was offered the opportunity to return to Paris and take over the kitchens of the George V—an establishment that is to Paris what the Savoy is to London—Jacques agreed, but only on condition that Mark accompanied him.

  “It is wrong direction from Coventry,” Jacques warned him, “and in any case they sure to offer you my job at the Savoy.”

  “I’d better come along, otherwise those Frogs will never get a decent meal.”

  “Those Frogs,” said Jacques, “will always know when it’s my day off.”

  “Yes, and book in even greater numbers,” suggested Mark, laughing.

  It was not to be long before Parisians were flocking to the George V, not to rest their weary heads but to relish the cooking of the two-chef team.

  When Jacques celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday, the great hotel did not have to look far to appoint his successor.

  “The first Englishman ever to be maître chef de cuisine at the George V,” said Jacques, raising a glass of champagne at his farewell banquet. “Who would believe it? Of course, you will have to change your name to Marc to hold down such a position.”

  “Neither will ever happen,” said Mark.

  “Oh, yes it will, because I ’ave recommended you.”

  “Then I shall turn it down.”

  “Going to put cars on wheels, peut-être?” asked Jacques mockingly.

  “No, but I have found a little restaurant on the Left Bank. With my savings alone I can’t quite afford the lease, but with your help …”

  Chez Jacques opened on the rue du Plaisir on the Left Bank on May 1, 1982, and it was not long before those customers who had taken the George V for granted transferred their allegiance.

  Mark’s reputation spread as the two chefs pioneered “nouvelle cuisine,” and soon the only way anyone could be guaranteed a table at the restaurant in under three weeks was to be a film star or a cabinet minister.

  The day Michelin gave Chez Jacques its third star, Mark, with Jacques’s blessing, decided to open a second restaurant. The press and customers then quarreled among themselves as to which was the finer establishment. The reservation sheets showed clearly that the public felt there was no difference.

  When, in October 1986, Jacques died at the age of seventy-one, the restaurant critics wrote confidently that standards were bound to fall. A year later the same journalists had to admit that one of the five great chefs of France had come from a town in the British Midlands they could
not even pronounce.

  Jacques’s death only made Mark yearn more for his homeland, and when he read in The Daily Telegraph of a new development to be built in Covent Garden, he called the site agent to ask for more details.

  Mark’s third restaurant was opened in the heart of London on February 11, 1987.

  Over the years Mark Hapgood often traveled back to Coventry to see his parents. His father had retired long since, but Mark was still unable to persuade either parent to take the trip to Paris and sample his culinary efforts. But now that he had opened in the country’s capital, he hoped to tempt them.

  “We don’t need to go up to London,” said his mother, setting the table. “You always cook for us whenever you come home, and we read of your successes in the papers. In any case, your father isn’t so good on his legs nowadays.”

  “What do you call this, son?” his father asked a few minutes later as noisette of lamb surrounded by baby carrots was placed in front of him.

  “Nouvelle cuisine.”

  “And people pay good money for it?”

  Mark laughed, and the following day prepared his father’s favorite Lancashire hotpot.

  “Now that’s a real meal,” said Arthur after his third helping. “And I’ll tell you something for nothing, lad. You cook it almost as well as your mother.”

  A year later Michelin announced the restaurants throughout the world that had been awarded a coveted third star. The Times let its readers know on its front page that Chez Jacques was the first English restaurant ever to be so honored.

  To celebrate the award, Mark’s parents finally agreed to make the journey down to London, though not until Mark had sent a telegram saying he was reconsidering that job at Triumph. He sent a car to fetch his parents and had them installed in a suite at the Savoy. That evening he reserved the best table at Chez Jacques in their name.

  Vegetable soup followed by steak-and-kidney pie with a plate of bread-and-butter pudding to end on were not the table d’hôte that night, but they were served for the special guests at table 17.

  Under the influence of the finest wine, Arthur was soon chatting happily to anyone who would listen and couldn’t resist reminding the headwaiter that it was his son who owned the restaurant.

  “Don’t be silly, Arthur,” said his wife. “He already knows that.”

  “Nice couple, your parents,” the headwaiter confided to his boss after he had served them their coffee and supplied Arthur with a cigar. “What did your old man do before he retired? Banker? Lawyer? Schoolmaster?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” said Mark quietly. “He spent the whole of his working life putting wheels on cars.”

  “But why would he waste his time doing that?” asked the waiter incredulously.

  “Because he wasn’t lucky enough to have a father like mine,” Mark replied.

  THE CHINESE STATUE

  The little Chinese statue was the next item to come under the auctioneer’s hammer. Lot 103 caused those quiet murmurings that always precede the sale of a masterpiece. The auctioneer’s assistant held up the delicate piece of ivory for the packed audience to admire while the auctioneer glanced around the room to be sure he knew where the serious bidders were seated. I studied my catalog and read the detailed description of the piece, and what was known of its history.

  The statue had been purchased in Ha Li Chuan in 1871 and was referred to as what Sotheby’s quaintly described as “the property of a gentleman,” usually meaning that some member of the aristocracy did not wish to admit that he was having to sell off one of the family heirlooms. I wondered if that was the case on this occasion and decided to do some research to discover what had caused the little Chinese statue to find its way into the auction rooms on that Thursday morning over one hundred years later. “Lot Number 103,” declared the auctioneer. “What am I bid for this magnificent example of …”

  Sir Alexander Heathcote, as well as being a gentleman, was an exact man. He was exactly six feet three and a quarter inches tall, rose at seven o’clock every morning, joined his wife at breakfast to eat one boiled egg cooked for precisely four minutes, two pieces of toast with one spoonful of Cooper’s marmalade, and drink one cup of China tea. He would then take a hackney carriage from his home in Cadogan Gardens at exactly 8:20 and arrive at the Foreign Office at promptly 8:59, returning home again on the stroke of six o’clock.

  Sir Alexander had been exact from an early age, as became the only son of a general. But unlike his father, he chose to serve his queen in the diplomatic service, another exacting calling. He progressed from a shared desk at the Foreign Office in Whitehall to third secretary in Calcutta, to second secretary in Vienna, to first secretary in Rome, to deputy ambassador in Washington, and finally to minister in Peking. He was delighted when Mr. Gladstone invited him to represent the government in China as he had for some considerable time taken more than an amateur interest in the art of the Ming dynasty. This crowning appointment in his distinguished career would afford him what until then he would have considered impossible, an opportunity to observe in their natural habitat some of the great statues, paintings, and drawings he had previously been able to admire only in books.

  When Sir Alexander arrived in Peking, after a journey by sea and land that took his party nearly two months, he presented his seals patent to the Empress Tzu-hsi and a personal letter for her private reading from Queen Victoria. The empress, dressed from head to toe in white and gold, received her new ambassador in the throne room of the Imperial Palace. She read the letter from the British monarch while Sir Alexander remained standing at attention. Her Imperial Highness revealed nothing of its contents to the new minister, wishing him only a successful term of office in his appointment. She then moved her lips slightly up at the corners, which Sir Alexander judged correctly to mean that the audience had come to an end. As he was conducted back through the great halls of the Imperial Palace by a mandarin in the long court dress of black and gold, Sir Alexander walked as slowly as possible, taking in the magnificent collection of ivory and jade statues scattered casually around the building in much the way Cellinis and Michelangelos today lie stacked against one another in Florence.

  As his ministerial appointment was for only three years, Sir Alexander took no leave, but preferred to use his time to put the embassy behind him and travel on horseback into the outlying districts to learn more about the country and its people. On these trips he was always accompanied by a mandarin from the palace staff who acted as interpreter and guide.

  On one such journey, passing through the muddy streets of a small village with but a few houses, called Ha Li Chuan, a distance of some fifty miles from Peking, Sir Alexander chanced on an old craftsman’s working place. Leaving his servants, the minister dismounted from his horse and entered the ramshackle wooden workshop to admire the delicate pieces of ivory and jade that crammed the shelves from floor to ceiling. Although modern, the pieces were superbly executed by an experienced craftsman, and the minister entered the little hut with the thought of acquiring a small memento of his journey. Once in the shop he could hardly move in any direction for fear of knocking something over. The building had not been designed for a six-feet-three-and-a-quarter visitor. Sir Alexander stood still and enthralled, taking in the fine-scented jasmine smell that hung in the air.

  An old craftsman bustled forward in a long, blue coolie robe and flat black hat to greet him; a jet black pigtail fell down his back. He bowed very low and then looked up at the giant from England. The minister returned the bow while the mandarin explained who Sir Alexander was and his desire to be allowed to look at the work of the craftsman. The old man was nodding his agreement even before the mandarin had come to the end of his request. For over an hour the minister sighed and chuckled as he studied many of the pieces with admiration and finally returned to the old man to praise his skill. The craftsman bowed once again, and his shy smile revealed no teeth but only genuine pleasure at Sir Alexander’s compliments. Pointing a finger to th
e back of the shop, he beckoned the two important visitors to follow him. They did so and entered a veritable Aladdin’s cave, with row upon row of beautiful miniature emperors and classical figures. The minister could have settled down happily in the orgy of ivory for at least a week. Sir Alexander and the craftsman chatted away to each other through the interpreter, and the minister’s love and knowledge of the Ming dynasty was soon revealed. The little craftsman’s face lit up with this discovery, and he turned to the mandarin and in a hushed voice made a request. The mandarin nodded his agreement and translated.

  “I have, Your Excellency, a piece of Ming myself that you might care to see. A statue that has been in my family for over seven generations.”

  “I should be honored,” said the minister.

  “It is I who would be honored, Your Excellency,” said the little man, who thereupon scampered out of the back door, nearly falling over a stray dog, and on to an old peasant house a few yards behind the workshop. The minister and the mandarin remained in the back room, for Sir Alexander knew the old man would never have considered inviting an honored guest into his humble home until they had known each other for many years, and only then after he had been invited to Sir Alexander’s home first. A few minutes passed before the little blue figure came trotting back, pigtail bouncing up and down on his shoulders. He was now clinging to something that from the very way he held it close to his chest, had to be a treasure. The craftsman passed the piece over for the minister to study. Sir Alexander’s mouth opened wide, and he could not hide his excitement. The little statue, no more than six inches in height, was of the Emperor Kung and as fine an example of Ming as the minister had seen. Sir Alexander felt confident that the maker was the great Pen Q who had been patronized by the emperor, so that the date must have been around the turn of the fifteenth century. The statue’s only blemish was that the ivory base on which such pieces usually rest was missing, and a small stick protruded from the bottom of the imperial robes; but in the eyes of Sir Alexander nothing could detract from its overall beauty. Although the craftsman’s lips did not move, his eyes glowed with the pleasure his guest evinced as he studied the ivory emperor.