In the Kitchen

by Monica Ali

  ‘Freud,’ said Gabriel, ‘has been thoroughly discredited.’ He had no idea if this was true, but it sounded likely enough.

  Nikolai screwed up his little mouse eyes as he lit another cigarette. ‘Let’s look at the question from another angle. You prefer a more scientific approach?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Scientific, controlled experimentation, measurable results – proof, in other words?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Gabe.

  ‘Philosophers and therapists never give us proof. But when we see hard results, we go with the evidence, isn’t that right?’

  ‘We haven’t got all day,’ said Gabriel. He wasn’t stupid. He could see what Nikolai was doing: leading him down a corridor, closing the doors of objection along the way. It was a salesman’s trick.

  ‘I will be brief. I’m thinking of a classic experiment conducted at Harvard University in the early nineties. Psychologists explored how students evaluate their teachers. A group of students were asked to rate lectures on the basis of a thirty-second video clip with no sound. The students agreed with each other about which teachers were most competent and professional, which possessed other good classroom qualities. All this after thirty seconds of viewing complete strangers.’ Nikolai had another hit of vodka. He licked his colourless lips.

  ‘And?’ said Gabriel. ‘So?’

  ‘Not only did they agree with each other – the scores those students gave also accurately predicted the evaluations that the teachers received from their real students at the end of a full semester. The first group of students were, of course, acting on instinct; the second group – the real students – believed they were acting on reason, making logical choices, but it led them to the same place.’

  ‘If that’s the best you can come up with,’ said Gabriel, ‘that doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘According to many cognitive scientists,’ said Nikolai, ‘we only think we act consciously because our inner voice is very good at constructing explanations for behaviour that is, in fact, unconsciously generated.’

  Gabriel stretched. He scratched the back of his head, in a leisurely manner for a change, enjoying a good rub. If Nikolai wanted to waste his intelligence on justifying his own inertia, on why he shouldn’t even bother trying to improve his own situation, then more fool Nikolai.

  ‘You’re talking about psychologists, right, those guys at Harvard? How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?’

  ‘I could talk about neuroscience,’ said Nikolai, ‘I could talk about the half-second delay between the initiation of an action and the conscious decision to act, I could talk about all that but it might be too … unsettling.’

  Gabe could imagine Nikolai in a political meeting, working the crowd, manipulating emotions, plying his rhetoric. Yes, he had probably been a troublemaker, Gabe could imagine it. But he wasn’t pulling Gabriel’s strings.

  ‘We have to take responsibility.’

  ‘For what?’ said Nikolai.

  ‘For ourselves, for each other, we can’t retreat into that kind of … that kind of … playing with words.’

  ‘Playing with words?’ Nikolai smiled his bloodless smile. ‘No, OK. Maybe this is why you dream of Yuri. You take some responsibility for what happened to him.’

  ‘No,’ said Gabe, ‘what do you mean? How could that be my fault? It’s not as if I said he could stay down there.’

  ‘I did not say fault. I made a speculation about your feeling of responsibility – for the world in which we live, for the kind of world in which there will always be more Yuris, struggling to exist.’

  ‘I didn’t make the world,’ said Gabriel, taking the hip flask. ‘I just live in it. Same as you.’

  On his way back in to work Gabriel stopped at Ernie’s hut. Ernie and Oona, scrunched together over the computer, sprang apart. They looked at him.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Gabe, backing out again, ‘never mind. Carry on.’

  He glanced back through the window and saw Oona sucking madly on the end of her pen.

  Gleeson was loitering in the passageway, speaking into his mobile phone. ‘Victoria, same as usual,’ he said, ‘but the pick-up’s going to be later … well, they’ll just have to wait.’ He turned and saw Gabriel, jabbed his first and second fingers at his eyes and then poked them in Gabe’s direction: I’m watching you. He could fuck right off.

  Gabe floated past him and went to the pastry kitchen to speak to Chef Albert. The place was in a mess, the bins full to overflowing, the Hobart mixer full of goo, the Carpigiani smeared with ice cream. Something was burning in the baker’s oven, the Rondo had been left with a dangling pastry tongue, and there appeared to be a splatter of egg yolk up one wall. Chef Albert’s muppet, piping meringue shells, was covered in flour, which also lay like a sifting of snow all over the floor.

  Chef Albert leaned over a worktop examining a pair of breasts. ‘Chef,’ he cried. ‘Look! Zis is a work of art, no?’

  ‘What happened here?’ said Gabriel.

  Chef Albert closed his newspaper. He put his hands on his fat hips and tossed his head so that his toque sailed devilishly close to the wind. ‘Spontaneity,’ he said. ‘Creativity. To make ze omelette, one must break many eggs.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gabe. ‘For a moment I thought someone had been throwing flour bombs.’

  ‘Ha ha! Ha he ha he ha!’ The pastry chef slapped his thigh. His hat slipped over one eye. When the convulsion had passed he straightened himself and the hat. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘zis is correct.’

  ‘Right,’ said Gabe, ‘well, I’m sure you’ll get it cleaned up. I wanted to speak to you about—’

  ‘Psst,’ said Chef Albert. ‘I ’ave something.’ He sidled into a corner, making cod-furtive gestures for Gabe to follow.

  ‘Do you need to check the oven?’ said Gabe.

  ‘Later, later,’ said Chef Albert. ‘Excuse me, Chef, but I ’ave heard … about ze beautiful girlfriend, ’ow she …’ He gripped Gabe’s shoulders, pulled him close and administered a kiss to each cheek. ‘You are suffering!’

  ‘Not really,’ said Gabe. He looked over at the assistant, busy piping meringue directly into his mouth.

  ‘Yes,’ said Chef Albert, his moustache trembling. ‘Suffering!’ He whisked a packet of pills from his top pocket. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘not zis. Although, maybe zis, also. You ’ave depression, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘No,’ said Gabe. ‘Non.’ He called to the assistant. ‘Check that oven.’

  Chef Albert shook a small brown bottle in Gabriel’s face. ‘Na ne na ne na,’ he said, as if soothing a baby with a rattle. ‘You decide – ’ow you say – to play ze field … ba boom!’ He made a phallic symbol with fist and forearm. ‘You make nice with ze girlfriend … ba ba boom! She begs you to stay.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gabriel, ‘but no thanks.’

  ‘Chef, I am fifty-two years old and my erection it lasts two, three hours. What a gift of life. You should see for yourself.’

  ‘I appreciate the offer,’ said Gabe.

  Chef Albert tried to stuff the bottle in Gabriel’s trouser pocket. The assistant opened the oven. Thick black smoke streamed out. The bottle fell on the floor and a cloud of white flour rose.

  ‘Genuine Viagra,’ cried Chef Albert, in his haste kicking the bottle beneath a counter. He got down on his hands and knees.

  Gabriel got out of there, while the pastry chef crawled this way and that calling softly to his pills and the assistant leaped around with a fire extinguisher, coating the place in foam.

  * * *

  Sweating up a torrent in his office, Gabe couldn’t settle to anything. His mind was too restless, and he needed to get a few things straight in his head. For example, was he heartbroken about Charlie or not? The answer seemed to be sometimes yes and sometimes no, which wasn’t helpful in the least. Leave that one aside for now. What about Lena? Was he her knight in shining armour, or was he currently the last in a long list of men who had abused the poor girl? Being painfull
y honest with himself he had to say he did not know. Maybe the honest answer was both. Even his career, the path he’d followed, the straight line he thought he’d walked, was twisted and looped now he looked back on it, half hidden in the undergrowth.

  He went out to the kitchen floor as dinner service was about to begin. Benny was dipping veal cutlets into flour and then egg wash and coating them in breadcrumbs. One tray was fully prepared and ready to go.

  ‘Getting on OK?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Yes, Chef,’ said Benny.

  ‘Do you … do you need any help?’

  ‘No, Chef. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll just do a few for you.’

  ‘Yes, Chef.’

  ‘Benny?’

  Benny moved up the work surface to make room for Gabe. He bowed his big head to his work. Gabriel stared at the silvery scar across his face.

  ‘Benny, remember you told me about your friend, the little general?’

  ‘Kono,’ said Benny, the word resonating deep in the back of his throat.

  ‘Yes, Kono. Where is he now?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘When …’ Gabe began. He didn’t know quite what it was that he wanted to ask. ‘When we went out for a drink that evening and you told me about him, about your friends, a bit about your life …’

  ‘I remember. Alcohol makes me talk.’ He accented the words so thickly you could stand a spoon up in them. ‘Usually I don’t touch it.’

  ‘But the way you spoke was …’ Benny’s tales were so neat and ordered – compact, like Benny himself. ‘I mean, you tell a good story,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Chef,’ said Benny, drawing himself up as though Gabe had fixed a medal to his chest. ‘But every refugee knows how to tell his story. For him, you understand, his story is a treasured possession. For true, it is the most important thing he owns.’

  He left work early, taking a couple of the veal cutlets, which he fried for himself and Lena when he got home. After supper Lena sat at the kitchen table working on her ‘brief’ for the private eye, twisting alternately the pen top and her earrings. She wrote in Russian but still covered the paper with her arm whenever he approached. He kissed her on the forehead and went to get ready for bed. The earlier he went to bed, he had decided, the better he would sleep. It was overtiredness that ruined his nights.

  He sat in bed with a book in his hands. He thought about Ted. He thought about Mum. He thought about catering college. Why did he quit school? He’d followed his interests, hadn’t he, taken his interest in science in a practical direction. It all made sense.

  What interest in science? A chemistry O-level. A notebook, written up at the Manchester Jarvis, while he was still a trainee, of his ‘experiments’ with grilled steak, listing times, temperatures, results, his keen observations regarding the Maillard reactions, the denaturing and coagulation of muscle protein. Gabriel started to feel his own coagulation, the blood thickening in his veins.

  He opened the book again, The Universe in a Nutshell. He started to read. What did it matter, anyway, when he was just a speck – less than that, much less – on a planet orbiting a star in an outer arm of the Milky Way, one galaxy among billions and billions of galaxies, in a universe that is ever expanding, without boundaries in space or time.

  His chest began to burn. He ignored it, turned the page and read about black holes.

  He couldn’t breathe. The only black hole he could comprehend was the one opening now before him. He shifted his legs carefully over the side of the bed and pushed his shoulders back, trying to expand his lungs. Oxygen, they needed more oxygen. Tingling in his hands and feet. Not enough oxygen. His blood was too thick. His heart couldn’t push the blood. It was throwing itself against the inside of his ribs, getting all mashed up. He’d end up having a … heart attack. Christ, he was stupid. He tried to call out to Lena, but no sound came. His mobile was on the stand beside his bed, he grabbed for it and it fell to the floor. Gabriel fell too.

  The pain in his chest and shoulder was searing. He managed to dial the number. He thought, this may be the last thing that I ever do.

  ‘Emergency services.’

  ‘Help,’ said Gabriel. ‘Help.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE MORNING SUN SCATTERED SUGAR HERE AND THERE ACROSS the moors which stretched out ahead, white glowing spills among the russet tones of green and brown. Gabriel squinted into the distant cut and swathe. This gently sloping, ever-reaching land was filled with a vague kind of longing. The peaty ground was soft beneath his boots. The red winter bracken shouldered the wind.

  It was Christmas Eve. They used to walk up to the tower on Christmas Eve and the whole of Blantwistle, it seemed, would be there, airing the children, the old folk, the dog.

  ‘Where’s everyone gone?’ said Gabe.

  Ted leaned two-handed on his walking stick. ‘Shops. Shopping, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘We can stop here if you like.’

  Gabriel had driven them up (raised Ted’s old Rover from under her shroud) and parked in a lay-by. They’d walked scarcely a third of a mile.

  ‘Give over wi’ that fussing,’ said Ted. But he stayed where he was.

  Gabriel drifted off the path. He crossed some rocky ground. ‘Back in a minute,’ he called to Ted, and hoped the words weren’t blown away.

  It was all bracken. Where was the heather? When he was a boy there was bell heather here, and cross-leaved heath and of course there was ling – common heather – everywhere. In summer there’d be great thick purple carpets of the stuff. After they’d moved to Plodder Lane, they’d march out of the garden, him and Jen, across the cow fields, across Marsh End, over by Sleepwater Farm, and run on the moors. They’d not be missed until Dad got home. He’d take a stick to the nodding cotton-wool heads of the cotton grass. Jenny collected bilberries and tart little cloudberries and sometimes she found crowberries, hard and black, and didn’t eat them but drew with them on a rock. And there was lime-green sphagnum that sprang up when you pushed it down and the scattered yellow stars of the bog asphodel, and the sundew that ate insects, and if you were lucky you could lie on your belly in the soft and soggy ground and watch a butterfly slowly dissolving in the plant’s red and yellow hairy mouth.

  There was nothing now but coarse grass and ferns. Nothing to keep a boy here. When they were kids they’d spend a summer’s day. If he came back in the summer maybe he’d find berries and flowers.

  They’d always keep Twistle Tower in view because they knew the way home from there, and it was easy to get lost on the moors. There was a proper name for the tower but he couldn’t remember it. He remembered pretending it was a space rocket, eighty-five feet of stone topped with a glass-domed cockpit. You could see Morecambe Bay from up there. You could see Blackpool Tower. You could see the Isle of Man. When the mist wasn’t in, which it usually was. He’d smoked his first cigarette in the dank stairwell, French-kissed Catherine Dyer against the two-feet-thick stone wall, counted the eight sides, sixteen windows, ninety-two steps, one hundred and fifteen rivets in the viewing deck platform so many times he would take the numbers to his grave.

  Sometimes Mum forgot they were playing in the back garden and went out and locked all the doors. There was always Twistle Tower and they’d go in out of the rain, though you could sit there a month and not get dry. If he planned ahead he’d take his binoculars and look for birds. In summer you’d see all sorts – curlews, skylarks, lapwings. They didn’t interest him so much. Of course he liked the merlins, the buzzards and peregrines, the thrill of spotting a hen harrier or sparrow hawk. He’d seen a golden eagle once.

  Today he’d not seen so much as a pipit, not heard the red grouse call go-back-go-back. In London he hardly saw a sparrow, a blackbird. From pigeons there was no escape.

  Gabriel thought he should turn, find Ted, but the moor pulled him on a little further and a little further yet. He saw that there was heather here among the bracken and large stands up ahead. Now that he had stopped
looking he saw the place was not so barren after all. Creeping dogwood in its purple winter foliage ran under his feet, and there was a clump of bog rosemary, here a juniper bush. He reached a track and looked down the spine of a shallow valley, the moors rising like soft gold wings, and the sun beat white-pale in the sky, sending flurries of light down on the hillsides and over the far clouds that started to roll in now, dark and low.

  Gabe breathed deeply and gave himself to a single thought. Yes, I am alive.

  Since he had called for the ambulance, over a week ago now, he kept thinking this same thing. By the time the paramedics arrived he had recovered, was only winded by the ordeal, the embarrassment, but they insisted on taking him in. The doctor ran an ECG. ‘We see it pretty often,’ he said. ‘You’d be surprised. People always think they’re the first person who’s ever confused a blocked artery and a panic attack.’

  It wasn’t a heart attack but it still made him think. I’m alive. He could have a heart attack. People dropped down dead. If it could happen to anyone, it could happen to him. Why not? That he could, most certainly, die made him feel all the more definitely alive.

  He closed his eyes for a moment to savour the wind on his face.

  Lena hadn’t come to the hospital but when he returned, though he told her everything was fine, she rested a hand on his chest and watched him. In the days that followed she kept watching him instead of the television and she even laughed a little whenever he made a joke.

  Gabe found Ted by the dry-stone wall. A stray sheep pulled at a tuft of grass. Ted swung his walking stick in the red-brown brush.

  ‘Here somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘What’ve you lost?’

  Ted got down on his knees, the difficulty of the manoeuvre betrayed only by a tightening of the lips. ‘This is it,’ he said, pushing the vegetation back. ‘Memorial stone.’

  Gabe bent down to read the inscription. Herbert Haydock, William Railton, Roger Wolstenholme.

  ‘What’s this? Not buried here, are they?’

  ‘Buried down by Kitty Fields. In t’cemetery. You not heard this story before?’