The Belle Hotel

by Craig Melvin

  ‘So, you son of chef too?’

  ‘Yes, Guillaume.’

  ‘You comprends what it like, oui?’

  Charlie nodded and raised his glass of white to his Gallic double. No need for sleeping out under the stars that night with the risk of being woken by the fishermen, or worse, Guillaume wanted them to stay as his guests. Charlie, Tom and his guitar spent a peaceful night in bunks built into the eaves. Both beds had a tiny window so you could gaze out over the water. Charlie was woken briefly by the sound of the boat setting out, full moon over flaked blue, and again at dawn as the catch came in.

  Morning meant pastries, a hot bath in a tiny French tub and Guillaume’s top tip for buskers.

  ‘Ed for ze Côte d’Azur.’

  No charge for dinner. ‘Maybe I come to ze Belle Hotel someday.’

  This meant that they had enough left for first class to Cannes and a slap-up lunch on the train.

  A postcard from Marseille

  Bouillabaisse a L’Épuisette, is all about the saffron and the rouille. Bouillabaisse without rouille is like Marseille without sunshine. Or Charlie without any legover.

  3 tbsp water

  ¾ cup course baguette breadcrumbs

  3 garlic cloves

  ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt

  ½ teaspoon cayenne

  3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil (you can get it from the cash’n’carry)

  À bientôt!

  Charlie

  p.s. love to Mum

  Franco read the postcard out to Janet and Lulu before service, omitting the legover bit in the interests of decency. Lulu was shaping up well under Franco’s watchful gaze. This was what Franco had hoped for, all those years ago when he’d seen Charlie and Lulu playing chef and restaurant manager. Now that she was working for him, Franco was determined to show Lulu everything he knew about the art of hospitality. Nothing Lulu did, from silver service to the replacing of a dropped napkin, escaped Franco’s gaze.

  Lulu was under some other watchful gazes, Franco had noticed. Charlie could barely expect her to be a nun when he was away. All the staff were at it. What about that young chambermaid who conceived her first with his sous chef in the linen cupboard? And on a Saturday, changeover day, too, in the height of summer. Hats off to the buggers for finding the time.

  Lulu feigned disinterest at Charlie’s soup wisdom. Screw him, she was having a blast in Brighton. Sure, Franco was a bit of a taskmaster, but she was learning heaps. Certainly beat having a gap year, or whatever excuse for work experience Charlie was having gadding about in the sun. She’d got herself a good thing going with Massimo; well, if Franco was going to dangle delicious Italian waiters in front of her on a daily basis, what’s a girl to do but take a bite? Janet had spotted something going on between Lulu and Massimo and tipped her the nod on the sly. What was good for the goose was good for the gander. And, anyway, she was in love with Belle Hotel, not Massimo, or Charlie, come to think of it. Lulu had fallen head over heels with Belle Hotel and at eighteen was sure she wanted to spend the rest of her working life within its four walls. She could see this better than Charlie could. His determination to follow Franco’s masterplan was matched in intensity by her own plan to be the queen bee of Belle Hotel. Franco seemed to be helping her with this, too. Taking time to show her how to do a Dover Sole at the table the proper way.

  ‘Watch me, Lu. Then you do it. Spoon and fork, the old-school way. Fish knife if you get in a spot of bother. Ask the punter to lend you theirs. Adds to the theatre of it. Now then. What say we share this delicious dish before they start pitching up for their dinner?’

  Franco gave her the secret ingredient of the Belle Hotel Café de Paris sauce, so that she could whisper it to preferred guests and so build her own network of loyal customers. Lulu liked working for Franco, he was a class act. Which was more than she could say for her dad. Roger, for his part, came and spent his nouveau riches as often as Lulu would let him.

  ‘Daaad, don’t tuck your napkin in your shirt, it’s naff. Here, let me lay it on your lap. There. Now you look proper.’

  In Cannes, Charlie and Tom blearily busked the Croisette for the afternoon, vowing to stay sober until they had made their pay next time, then it was siesta on a couple of benches and more songs for supper before early to bed in a clearing on the road out of town.

  The next morning, bust once more, they hitched to Monte Carlo, took up a winning spot outside the Casino, then blew the lot on blackjack and cocktails, in tuxedos borrowed from concierge. Broke again before sundown.

  Tom wanted to busk by the boats, so they set up shop on the jetty with some of the biggest gin palaces Charlie had ever seen. Made Roger’s boat look like a dinghy. They played for over an hour without a single donation, then as if by magic an Arabian princess descended from Montélimar II and dropped a thousand-franc note into their hat.

  She stayed and chatted a while – Charlie guessed the three of them were all about the same age.

  ‘I wish I had your freedom.’ Princess gestured up at two black-clad bodyguards keeping them within gunshot.

  ‘I wish I had your boat.’

  Charlie thought for a moment that their Marseille luck would hold up on them, but the invitation to come aboard was withheld.

  ‘My father is up there. If he even knew I was talking to you…’

  With that, the princess salaamed and jetted back up the gangplank. Charlie grinned, rubbed the big note between thumb and forefinger and set off for the bar.

  They eked out their last desultory days, bust again, in mellow Menton. The honey-hued border town took them into its bosom, paying when they played and allowing them to slip unnoticed over the border into Italy for a bowl of pesto-flecked pasta when they’d had their fill of crêpes. On their last night – Tom had been keeping count – someone laid on a farewell fiesta. They sat hidden in their cliff-top cave and watched the firework frenzy colour the sky goodbye.

  ‘Oi’m the happiest I’ve ever been. This is it, Charlie. Music is my ting. Fuck cooking. I’m gonna be a star. Next toime I come to the Côte d’Azur, it’ll be on a fookin rock ’n’ roll tour bus.’

  ‘I believe you, Tom. I’ll come and do the catering for your aftershow party. If you can afford me with my Michelin star by then.’

  The Nice sleeper to Paris and a quick gig under the Tour d’Eiffel saw Tom and Charlie back at Basel Bahnhof Buffet in time for evening service, as agreed.

  They changed out of road weary jeans and tees into starched chef’s whites. Nothing, and everything, had changed. The trip took Charlie out of the closed world of catering and shook the straitjacket of meal service from him. He’d tasted freedom, loved it and yet knew his duty: his birthright was to continue on his quest.

  Chef saw the two boys re-enter his domain. He pointed at Charlie and flicked the finger back towards his serious face.

  ‘Welcome back, Herr Sheridan, I trust you enjoyed your vacation?’

  The sun-tanned face and carefree grin answered him. Yes, oui, ya.

  ‘So, it is time to take things seriously. Your friend, Tom, he will see out his time frying rösti. For you I have other plans. You are going to L’Escargot.’

  Fucking hell, was this Franco’s fiddling? The Michelin-starred, street-facing superstar of the operation. He’d seen a few of the chefs from L’Escargot in the locker room, they made Shafheitel look sane.

  ‘L’Escargot. Yes, Chef. Thanks, merci, greutzi. Shit.’

  Charlie served out his last four months in flame. He barely saw Tom, just a quick beer before a weary begging bed. Ten days of freedom from food, ten days. Then the focus.

  The focus. All work and no play. Sleep, cook, drink, don’t sleep, cook, cook, cook. Sleep, dream about cooking, wake, cook, cook, drink, cook…

  The skills. The skills that Michelin-starred joint transmuted to Charlie daily. He’d seen nothing like it. Nothing to that interstellar standard. Sure, Franco knew his way around a lobster. He’d been self-taught by the best: Delia and Fanny. The s
ous chef Charlie was apprenticed to at L’Escargot spoke no English and Charlie had little French beyond ‘oui, Chef’ and the most basic of culinary terms, but what passed from the six senses of that man was the magic that elevated Charlie from a cook to a chef.

  Charlie watched sous chef handle the still-live lobster with such tenderness as he sacrificially lowered it into the simmering bouillon. He lowered the lid onto the top of the pot and then leant down so that his ear was close to the steam emitting from between the two.

  ‘Pas de sel dans le bouillon. Seulement minéral végétal. Ècoute, Charlie, écoute.’ Chef gently tugged Charlie towards the simmering pot. ‘Pap, pap, pah.’

  He mouthed the sound of the lobster gently poaching in the liquor while tapping out the seconds with his clog.

  Charlie watched, transfixed. He knew the bouillon came from the central kitchen. Charlie had made it himself enough times that summer, the giant pot needing a small step ladder to enable one to give it its hourly stir. L’Escargot got all its basic stocks and sauces sent down in the dumb waiter from the enormous central kitchen above. It was the alchemic things they did to those basic stocks and sauces that made them Michelin star. More often than not, it was a case of doing less than was done in the mass catering kitchen above. Add less, season less, listen to the food, smell it, taste frequently, make every cut of the knife matter.

  Sous chef lifted the lobster out of its poaching liquor and shook it gently so that its exoskeleton gave off a staccato rattle. He then laid it so very gently upon the chopping board, lifted his largest knife away from the magnetic strip before him, crossed himself, then located that same pattern on the cusp of the lobster’s carapace and drove the point home until it bit through shell on both sides before pulling it out, one swift sword in the stone motion, before plunging swiftly back in at an exact ninety-degree angle.

  Charlie watched his mentor compete the rest of the task in silence. So different, so very different from the way that Sinker and Franco went about it. Something reverent and artistic in his touch compared to their workmanlike stabs. In moments, Chef had the tail meat out from both sides of the lengthways-split lobster. Next, he executed a flawless crack on the claw using the middle part of the knife’s edge. Leaving the blade in the cut he twisted sharply in both directions, mimicking the sharp snapping sound with a snap of his lips. The shell around the claw meat snapped cleanly and he prised the flesh away in an undamaged single piece.

  Not everything in the hot, cramped kitchen of L’Escargot came away undamaged. Charlie took his fair share of beatings from that sensitive sous chef. Little jabs with the tip of his knife when Charlie messed up on an order. The scorching flat of a palette knife across the back of the hand when he’d put his hands on the clean surface of the pass the moment after sous chef had mimed not to. Little acts of violence that, Charlie felt, helped embed the generations-old skills and long-held codes of a Michelin-starred kitchen brigade. Franco just threw pans. These guys took their violence as seriously as they took their food. Charlie loved every single fucking bit of it. The simmering anger that they barely kept a lid on. The way they urged one another on to greatness. The slap on the back when they got the plates out. The stab in the back when they fell short. It intoxicated Charlie like Wiki’s skunk.

  11 September 1992

  4pm

  Soon enough, summer ended and Charlie had to go back to England for a two-week stint at Le Gavroche, arranged by Franco as a little welcome-home surprise, no, don’t bother to unpack, you’re on the next Victoria train. Albert Roux’s driver is picking you up and you’re going to work under his son Michel Roux Jr. Good luck! Charlie stood in the lobby of Belle Hotel, shivering from the cold shoulder he’d just had from Lulu, shrugged his duffel bag back on and set off for Brighton Station, stopping at Brighton Ink to get ‘Born a Chef’ tattooed on his right bicep, just in case it was ever in doubt.

  Lulu’s cold shoulder was more of a frozen shoulder. She thought she’d seen a ghost. Him, standing there smoking, gaunt, with the bag she’d given him for Christmas slung over his shoulder. She’d been messing around with Massimo in the restaurant and wouldn’t put it past him to follow her out into the lobby and smack her on the bum. Lulu had heard rumours about Charlie messing around in Switzerland. Belle Hotel gossip, Franco bragging in the kitchen. But she had her own guilty secrets, too. Just over there in the restaurant. She turned on the heels of her sensible work shoes and ran to hide by the bins until he’d gone.

  Lulu felt miserable. Things were going so well at Belle Hotel. She was Chef de Rang, the term they used in the trade for the person who runs a whole section of the restaurant. Damn her childish attachment to Belle Hotel. Why hadn’t she taken an apprenticeship at another hotel? Her father laid the carpets all over town. Stupid move. Lulu wanted to be at least five hundred yards away from Charlie right now, along the seafront, somewhere. If the Paddy’s hadn’t flattened the Grand, maybe she’d have been there right now, instead of cowering by the rubbish. What Lulu needed was some way of knowing what her future held, when she was so unsure herself. With no mum to talk to and a dad whose life advice came from the thought pieces in Playboy, Lulu knew she’d have to take matters into her own hands.

  Tick, tock. Charlie hugging Janet by Franco’s striking clock. Lulu straining to hear the clicking of the lock.

  She begged the rest of the afternoon off. It was, after all, strictly speaking meant to be a split shift rather than a straight through shift. Franco said that the stupid rules didn’t apply for family and, hell, she was almost family and, who else was going to polish the silver before evening service. He’d let her sit, mind. He wasn’t a monster. What, love, an hour to yourself? I don’t think so. Oh, er, women’s problems. Well, ahem, you’d better go and sort it. Be back by five, mind.

  Madame Eva had the door to her arch slightly open; hopefully the sign she wasn’t with anyone. Lulu had passed her seafront arch many times on her way to meet Charlie after his Saturday job at Sinker the fishmonger. She knew from something her dad had once said that her mum had been a client of Madame Eva. Half the women in Brighton had crossed Madame Eva’s palm with silver at one time or another to find out what their future held.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Enter.’

  Lulu pushed at the bottom half of the stable door, it caught up with the top and together they swung inwards, flooding Madame Eva’s boudoir with warm September light. The spiritualist raised her chiffon-wrapped head from the velvet.

  ‘Hello, my dear. I’ve been expecting you. You’re Mary Hardman’s little girl, aren’t you? So terribly sad what happened to your mother. She came to see me not long before she’d conceived you. Wanting to know what the future held. I had a terrible vision. And I was right. But some things you mustn’t tell. And I didn’t. Sit, dear, sit. No need for that. This one’s on me. For your dear mother’s sake. There, there, dear. Dry your eyes. You’re safe here. I told your mother that she’d have a beautiful baby girl and that one day that girl would come and see me. And, well, here we are. Close the door, dear. I need the dark and all its hidden wonders to tell your fortune. Now, what is it you want to know?’

  Albert’s driver, Marcel, did indeed pick Charlie up, in his 2CV from the taxi rank at Victoria. Any grandson of the friend and chef to Lord Olivier was a friend to Albert.

  ‘Ello, you. Ow iz Chef Franco?’

  Marcel used his exceptionelle command of English profanities as the little car zoomed around Hyde Park Corner. Marcel executed a cheeky bit of French driving to nip them into Park Lane, albeit on the wrong side of the road, and into Mayfair.

  They pulled up outside the legend.

  ‘Welcome to Le Gavroche. First restaurant to be awarded three Michelin stars in ze UK. Jointly owned by my boss Albert and his brother Michel wiv ze Waterside Inn. Zo zat is about to change. Splitting ze bizness along fraternal lines. Family bizness, eh, fucking hard work.’

  Charlie knew all about it. Stuff of legend. Albert and Michel opening Le Gavroc
he together in Chelsea six years before Franco bought Belle Hotel, with ze ’elp of some old-school British aristo lolly. Then the torture of taking it in turns every week to run the kitchen and front of house. The odd cross word later, the brothers made the move to Mayfair at about the time Maggie made it to Downing Street, some said so she could just pop round in her slippers, but you know how people talk. Classic French food such as the noble Soufflé Suissesse, Le Caneton Gavroche and Omelette Rothschild. Rothschild being the banker who was the patron of the first celebrity chef, Carême in the 1820s. By the end of the eighties, Albert and Michel held their three stars with pride, but they were not too proud to send Marcel in the 2CV on the Kent car plane to stock up on forbidden French fruits.

  Marcel leant over to crank open Charlie’s door, gave him half a second to get out and then sped off.

  He looked up at the giant black door.

  ‘Psst, oy, chef.’

  Michel Roux Jr. Charlie would recognise those froggy eyes anywhere.

  ‘Down here, mate. Kitchen entrance. Front door’s for paying customers.’

  Charlie had heard the rumours. Roux robots, they said. Nobody spoke. Apart from Albert. When he did finally return. Michel Jr had a touch of the Johnny about him when Franco was around. Thank God I’m not Franco’s son, thought Charlie.