by Monica Ali
On the drive home Ted had been quiet. ‘Dad,’ said Gabe, eventually, ‘is Jimmy all right?’
‘I’d a pint with him after work,’ said Dad, ‘only yesterday.’
‘Did he go to the hospital? Did an ambulance take him? Did you go with him, Dad?’
Ted indicated to turn right. The tick-tick filled the car like a time bomb, nobody speaking, and Gabe felt his stomach contract, wishing now he’d not said a word.
When the car was stopped at some traffic lights Ted said, ‘Course in the old days you’d to do knotting on by hand. There’s a few as can do it still. I can do it. Jimmy could do it. Aye, there’s only one or two. I remember when I was learning, this old feller he tried to show me what to do. But he was that fast I couldn’t see what he were doing wi’ his fingers. And he couldn’t do it slow. It were ingrained in him, ingrained.’
It was Mum who had told Gabe about Jimmy, the morning of the funeral.
A waitress brought a Christmas pudding to the long table, the weight of it forcing her tongue out between her teeth. She set it alight. The coach party said ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’.
Ted said, ‘Have you handed in yer notice yet? They know you’ll be moving on?’
‘I’m waiting for the right time,’ said Gabe.
‘Mr Riley had a way of knowing who were about to leave. It were uncanny. Like he had a sixth sense. Well, he seemed to know everything, even who’d clocked on late, and he’d a lot of things to see to, but he always knew. What about your boss now? Good sort, is he, good man?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But, you know, the hotel doesn’t belong to him. He’s only an employee like me.’
‘Oh,’ said Ted. ‘I see. Who’s it belong to, then?’
‘Shareholders,’ said Gabe. PanCont had hotels all over the world and was listed on the US stock market. ‘American shareholders, I guess.’
‘What about your colleagues. You told ’em yet?’
‘Not yet, Dad. They won’t care. The catering business, it’s got a very high turnover. People move around.’
Ted said, ‘Not done too much of that meself.’ He smiled to acknowledge the understatement. ‘No, not done so much moving around. Maybe I should of, but it’s a bit late to be thinking of that. Loyalty,’ he said, ‘that don’t mean anything any more. It means points on your Tesco clubcard. It means buy five teas and get one free.’
‘We’re a nation of shopkeepers, Dad.’
Ted blew his nose. The effort of it made him pause a while. ‘But I don’t look back and wish I’d done it different. Only the small things, maybe. D’you know, I was stood by the window waiting for Jen, t’other week, is this, and there were a blackbird on the lawn and I was stood there watching, the way he’s trying to pull up this worm, and there’s a fascination to it, if you’ve a mind to notice. Well, we never really look. You see the colours in the feathers, like a slick of oil on water, you see the beauty in it when you take the time.’
‘You know what,’ said Gabe. ‘You know we were talking about “British” – what does it mean? There’s your answer, that’s what we’ve always done as a country: trade. We’re a trading nation. If anything’s our national identity, that’s it, that’s what it is.’
Ted set his hands on the table and ran them along the paper tablecloth. ‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘yes. But not any more. D’you know what the balance of payments is? Aye, expect you do. When we were the workshop of the world we sold to everywhere and we’d a healthy surplus, you see. But we’ve a huge deficit now because all as we can do is shop. We’re not a trading nation, we’re a nation of consumers, that’s all.’
‘Where does the money come from, then? You’ve got to be making money to spend it. If people want to spend it on shopping that’s up to them.’
‘Of course it’s up to them. I’m not telling anyone what to do.’ Ted folded his arms, as though – even if begged – he would refuse to direct the nation now. ‘But this country wants waking up. It’s in a dream world. How long can it go on?’
‘How long can what go on?’ Gabe tried to keep the irritation from his voice.
‘There’s no industry any more,’ said Ted. ‘We don’t produce anything. You can’t build a pyramid upside down, it’ll fall over, you’ve to get the foundation right.’
‘You mean, we don’t make ships any more? Cars? Cloth? So what, Dad? So what? There’s more people employed in curry houses now than in all those old industries combined. But so what? What’s bad about that?’
‘You can’t buy a box of matches what’s made in this country, never mind a ship. You can’t buy a television, a washing machine or any electrical product made here – all the components are foreign, and all as we’ve got is a few assembly plants, most of them foreign-owned.’
Gabe had his elbows on the table, his knuckles pressed together. As he listened he gnawed his fist. ‘We’ve moved on,’ he said. ‘We’ve moved up. People have got money to spend. At the top restaurants in London you can’t even get a table and these are places charging a hundred quid a head. It’s invisibles, Dad, you know, banking and finance and advertising. All that stuff.’
‘Invisibles,’ said Ted, making it a clumsy word. ‘The emperor’s got no clothes on. The whole country’s living on tick.’
‘The economy is booming. What’s so wrong with that?’
Ted sighed. ‘You understand these things better than me. To an old man like me it’s a house of cards. There’s nothing solid, that’s all I’m saying, but you don’t have to listen to me.’
Gabe disliked this new ploy of Ted’s, saying ‘you’re clever’ or ‘you understand’ and then contradicting everything Gabriel said. ‘You don’t have to understand the entire economy to make a good living. You can just get on with it and not worry about it. I’ve got enough to worry about.’
‘Aye, there’s the wedding,’ said Ted.
Gabriel bit his tongue. He wasn’t worried about getting married, he’d meant the restaurant. Typical of Dad to read absolutely everything wrong.
In the evening he rang Lena on her mobile. It went to voicemail and he left a message. He tried again later and then once again before he went to bed. He sat in bed with his mobile phone and dialled her number, counted the seven rings before the message service cut in and then hung up. He switched off the lamp and lay down with his phone on the pillow. Why hadn’t she called him back? Where could she be and why didn’t she take her phone? He picked up his mobile and scrolled through his contacts list. There was her name, Lena, this little scrap of lettering on a tiny glowing screen. This was all he had of her and it was better than nothing so he lay there in the dark, imagining he would never see her again and looking at her name.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
OONA SUCKED THE END OF HER PENCIL AS SHE TOTTED UP THE numbers from the previous night. She jotted down a couple of figures, licked her finger and turned the page in the reservations book. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I clean forgot where I counted to.’ She flicked the page back again.
Gabe pushed his foot against the wastebasket. He balanced his shoe on the rim and rocked the basket back and forth.
‘Nineteen tables of four, that makes … seventy-six.’ Oona crooned a little as she bent over the book, as if the numbers could be lulled into submission. ‘And seventeen twos – thirty-two, no, thirty-four.’
‘Oona,’ said Gabe, ‘there’s a calculator here.’ A ball of paper rolled on to the floor. Gabe righted the basket again but his foot still fretted around the rim.
‘Hoh,’ said Oona, ‘calculator.’ She laughed her cosmic laugh.
‘Give me the book,’ said Gabe. He stabbed at the calculator with a pen.
‘Hexercise,’ said Oona, ‘got to hexercise the brain.’
He’d picked up a message from Rolly this morning about some problem with insurance at the venue. Rolly didn’t sound in the best of moods. Gabe said, ‘Let’s just crack on. Give it to me.’
‘Nearly done,’ said Oona, ‘just have the walk-ins t
o do. Now what did I have? Sixty-seven and thirty-two?’
‘Seventy-six and thirty-four,’ said Gabe. To be a successful restaurateur you had to know about more than just food. There was health and safety, tax law, fire regulations, employment law, building regulations, licensing, environmental protection and sanitation. There was insurance to deal with. There was marketing and promotion and publicity. And more, always more.
‘Sixty-seven and thirty-four,’ said Oona, dragging the words from here to eternity.
‘Seventy-six,’ said Gabe. ‘SEVENTY-SIX.’ The bin rolled and clattered as he leaped from his chair. He snatched the book from her hands. ‘Christ,’ he said, as he sat down again. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but we haven’t got all day.’
Oona took her hair slides off the front of her chef’s whites. She cradled them in the palm of her hand, contemplating, perhaps, whether to turn in her badge.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Gabe. He needed an extra shot of coffee, after yet another night’s broken sleep. ‘Tell Damian to bring me a double espresso and get everyone together in ten minutes. I need to run through some stuff. OK?’
‘M’mmm,’ said Oona, her almond eyes drowsy with indifference. ‘OK.’ She clipped the diamanté slides back on the front of her coat. When she paused a few moments Gabriel had to restrain himself from jumping up and tipping her out of her chair.
The kitchen brigade seemed less like a United Nations assembly this morning and more like a pirate crew. Ivan wore his red bandanna, Benny had his trousers rolled and Damian stank of booze. Chef Albert stood at the front parrying and thrusting with a dough hook at some invisible foe, and an unlit cigarette dangled from Victor’s lips. Gabriel stared at Victor until he removed the cigarette and tucked it behind his ear. Gabe ran through the specials. Damian leaned on the worktop and burped. Someone needed to take him in hand before his drinking got out of control.
‘Pastry section,’ said Gabe. Oona had fucked up again. And now Gabe was going to have to listen while Chef Albert bitched and moaned. ‘The function tonight – they didn’t want a big cake, they want individual cakes and a candle on each one.’
Chef Albert hung the dough hook on his belt. ‘Ninety-five guests, no? Ninety-five birthday cakes for tonight?’
‘Yes,’ said Gabe. Oona hadn’t read the sheet properly. It was all down on there. It wasn’t only the extra work for the pastry section, it was the hike in the food cost as well.
Chef Albert pouted and shrugged with his hands on his hips. ‘I am a pâtissier,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said Gabe, ‘there’s no point moaning about it. Better forward planning next time.’ He nodded at Oona, hoping she would get his point, but she returned a smiling, contented nod that made him realize once and for all that it was completely futile expecting anything from her.
‘Moaning?’ said Chef Albert, looking round. ‘You hear moaning? Does a pâtissier not love to make ze cakes?’
‘You feeling all right?’ said Gabriel. It was inconceivable that Albert should miss an opportunity to complain. To quit complaining, where Chef Albert was concerned, was pretty much giving up on life. He would not be the first pastry man Gabriel had known who had decided to abandon all hope.
Chef Albert widened his sorrowful eyes. ‘Ye-es,’ he said, elongating the vowel with astonishment. ‘Je suis en pleine forme. I am – how you say? – tip top.’ He reached in his top pocket and extracted a pill bottle. ‘My docteur – he gives me more zan ze ’ealth. He gives me me!’
‘Jolly good,’ said Gabriel, anxious to move on down his list before Albert launched into some full-blown Gallic lament. ‘Right …’
‘Ow I wish,’ said Chef Albert, ‘zis man was in my life ten, twenty years ago. All zis sadness and suffering – I thought it was simply my temperament, my sensitivity, the artist in me. But, no!’ Albert was certainly quite animated today. And he seemed to have lost his aura of crackling frost, though maybe he had less starch than usual in his whites. ‘No! There is no meaning in zis suffering. Only a chemical imbalance! Alors, another miracle! My first birth is from ze mother – God rest her soul – and my second is from ze pills.’
‘Good for you,’ said Gabriel. ‘Holidays. Not long until Christmas, it’s busy as hell from here until the New Year. Anyone wants time off over Christmas, get your request in by the end of the day and I’ll think about it. If you don’t get your request in until tomorrow you’re too late. Clear?’ He looked over his bunch of ill-assorted brigands. Damian looked back at him glassy-eyed, the involuntary twitch of his eyelid the solitary sign of life. What was wrong with the lad? Where was his ambition? The kitchen drove plenty of men to drink but Damian – what was he? seventeen, eighteen? – had scarcely had time to work up a thirst.
‘I thought my first boss was a bastard,’ said Gabriel, attempting to hold Damian’s unsteady gaze. ‘Ranting off orders, do this, do that, and when he gave you a bollocking he’d push you up against the wall with his arm across your neck. We didn’t put in requests for holidays. He stuck a list on the noticeboard and you took whatever you got. The bad old days. But, you know what?’ Gabe placed his hands on the worktop and ran them along to the edge. ‘I realized after a while I wasted a lot of energy on hating that man and I took that energy and I turned it into something useful. I spent it on making a plan – to learn as much as I could, to get out of there, to move on to somewhere better and then to somewhere better and then I’d get to be the boss. And that’s what I did. Put some energy into it. Followed through.’
Nikolai, who was standing next to Damian, shook his head. ‘A nice story,’ he said. ‘This is what stories are for, to make order from the chaos of our lives.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Gabriel. ‘And what is a commis chef for? Chopping vegetables, that’s what.’ He hated the way Nikolai made out he was a philosopher king in rags, an intellectual in the gulag. It was a free country. Nobody was keeping him here. He rejected even a minor promotion, the better to feel oppressed, rather than working his way up like an honest man.
Victor, grinning, shuffling an imaginary deck of cards, said, ‘Man, you get to be the bastard now.’
‘Victor, my friend,’ said Gabriel, beginning calmly enough, ‘I’m sticking close to you today. I’m staying closer to you than those pimples between your eyes. I’m on you like the boils on your backside. Understood? IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?’ Gabe yanked down his hand – it had strayed up to his head – and stood clenching and unclenching his fists. He controlled his breathing, slow and deep. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘does anyone have any more business?’
Ivan pushed past a porter and a couple of commis. ‘I have a business,’ he said. ‘What bastard have stolen my knife?’ The way he glared at Victor suggested the question was purely rhetorical.
Victor quivered. ‘I never touched your filthy knife, bro.’
The grill man put his hand on his crotch and adjusted his balls in a manner that was oddly menacing, as if they rather than his brain would dictate any course of action he might take. His cauliflower ear was as red as his bandanna now. ‘Henckels knife,’ he growled. ‘German knife. My knife, you give back to me.’
‘Listen, homey,’ said Victor, ‘I ain’t got your knife.’
‘Homey?’ said Ivan. ‘Homey? You bend over and spread the buttocks and I show you …’ He performed an obscene gesture with his fist. ‘I show you who is homosexual.’
Though the scene wearied him, Gabe wanted to laugh. Everyone was straining to see what would happen next. Even Damian was standing more or less straight.
‘I saw a knife,’ said Benny, ‘near the dishwashers. Maybe that one is yours.’ He hurried across. ‘It is this?’ he said, returning.
Ivan muttered something that didn’t convey much in the way of gratitude. He rolled one sleeve and tested the blade by shaving the hair on his forearm.
‘You are most welcome,’ said Benny. His manners never deserted him. If he got mugged, Gabriel imagined, he would say you are most welcome as the thugs went on their way.
‘Show’s over,’ said Gabe, clapping his hands. ‘Get on with your prep. Shift it, people. Go.’
A few of the cooks mumbled yes, Chef, as they turned.
‘Can’t hear you,’ called Gabriel. ‘What did you say?’
‘Yes, Chef,’ they chanted, loud and clear this time.
Gabe pulled Oona aside as she attempted to shuffle off on her flat square feet. ‘Can I have a word?’
‘I’ll make us a nice cuppa tea.’
‘No, Oona, no tea. This won’t take long. It’s this cake business. Well, it’s not really that, it’s everything, that’s just the icing on …’ Gabe started over. ‘Oona, I’m giving you a formal warning. I’m going to write it up. You’ve cost us time and you’ve cost us money, again.’
‘But, darlin’,’ said Oona. ‘That wasn’t …’
‘No, Oona, enough chances. I’m doing things by the book from now on.’
Gabriel sat in his office and scanned through his list. He crossed off one item and added three more. Looking in his drawer for a new biro he found another list. There was yet another in the notebook in his bag, and another at home and one that he had started typing on his computer. In all probability there were more, lurking beneath the piles of paperwork, languishing in jacket pockets, trapped in files somewhere. If he got himself organized now he could put together a master list, with absolutely everything on it. Or maybe what he needed was one set of clearly separated lists, filtered into categories of … well, the place to start would be to make a list of the lists that were needed. That was what he would do right now. After he’d checked emails again. Perhaps he would call Lena first.
She had been curled in a foetal position on the sofa when he’d returned to the flat the previous night. All the lights were off and the television was on. She was watching a reality show.
‘Hey,’ said Gabe, lowering himself on to the couch. ‘I missed you.’ It was a ridiculous thing to say.
Lena slid one leg over his lap. He rubbed the arch of her foot.