Godfrey's face was almost as red as the beetroot soup he was learning to make. He and every surface within a three-foot radius were covered in debris. Jake didn't mind about the floor or the fact that Godfrey looked very silly with parsley in his hair, but he minded a lot about his worktops.
'That garlic is far too close to the dough, which should have gone in the fridge an hour ago, and those carrot peelings should be in the bin by now. You've finished prepping up the stock so TIDY UP!'
It was always the same. They always wanted to cook when what they should be doing was learning how to organise themselves first.
'Look at the state of you! You don't know where you're at because everything is in such an awful mess! What did I say to you when we began? You wipe your board down after every job and you wipe your knives clean after you've used them, just like you wipe your arse after every crap!' He grinned.
Everyone laughed. Poor Godfrey, who had been feeling that everything was spiralling out of control, watched with gratitude as Jake swiftly reduced chaos to order with a few deft gestures.
'But you are always on my back shouting at me to hurry up. It makes me so confused,' protested Godfrey. Cooking at home was never like this.
Jake smiled, but sympathetically. 'Of course you're confused – you're a novice. But that shouldn't stop you trying. Work at it and it will come right, which I admit in your case will take so long I'll probably have given up the will to live, but miracles may happen. I was in your shoes once.'
The kitchen chorused gleefully: 'Never, Chef! You were born perfect, Chef!'
Godfrey sighed happily. He loved it here, the heat, the terror, the frantic pace, even the insults. This was a good thing because they rained down on him so regularly he should really take an umbrella to work. But he knew he had already learned more than he ever had in the back of the class at school, where he had spectacularly failed every exam he turned up for. His head was now so full of information he thought he might burst. In fact, last night he had, but that was only because he was tasting every dish on the go, as well as eating three large meals a day.
It was ironic, given that he was a cook, that Jake couldn't actually recall the last time he had sat down to a proper meal. He tasted all the time as well, of course, and still carried three tasting spoons in his pocket as he had been taught at college, but a whole meal – like normal people?
Chance would be a very fine thing indeed, he mused, pouring himself a cup of coffee, which was destined to follow the fate of all the others and go cold before he got time to drink it. He went through to his office. The staff were clearing up and pushing off for a kip before evening shift but he had a pile of paperwork to catch up on, a job he hated and always put off as long as possible. This was the tedious side of running a business.
He made a mental note to order more wine glasses to replace the ones that had gone the way of all glassware. Hans should have done this, as bar manager, but he had been totally useless today, getting orders wrong and losing bills.
'What you smoke when you are off duty is entirely up to you. But if you turn up for work again off your head, you will be sacked on the spot. Is that clear?'
'Absolutely,' said Hans unhappily. He was enjoying working for Jake and didn't want to blow it. Hans was a wannabe hippy and Jake was forever having to tear down posters that he had put up advertising protest marches.
'But, why, Boss? The plight of the coffee farmers in Brazil is schrecklich, I mean terrible!' he had protested a few days earlier.
'I agree, but the march took place last Saturday. In London. When we were slightly busy. None of us could have got there. Why don't you spend your afternoon off sourcing some decent fairly traded coffee for the restaurant to use?'
Also, fighting with Hans's hippy spirit was a Teutonic drive towards neatness and order. Generally, all the restaurant glasses stood to sparkling attention behind the bar like a crack troop in the army, and customers' bills were lined up as if they were on parade. But now Hans was so upset at the thought of losing his job that he had a disastrous lunchtime shift and got so many things wrong he was convinced Jake was going to sack him anyway, especially when he called Hans into his office.
'I bollocked you this morning and you deserved it, but I don't bear grudges, so chill out, man.'
Hans grinned and went off much happier.
What else was there to do? Oh, yes, the toilet in the men's loo was only flushing when it felt like it, which wasn't often enough. He could call a plumber, but it would be cheaper to fix it himself. Jake yawned and stretched – the life of a chef was such a glamorous one.
Also he had to write a prep list for Godfrey. It was imperative to give beginners at least ten things to do all at once at the beginning of their shift. It focused their little minds and taught them to move swiftly and with grace. At the moment Godfrey was blundering around like a small hippo on steroids. It was going to be a long haul.
Tess put her head round the door. 'Someone to see you, Boss.'
It was the drunken redhead from the night before, ghostly pale under an enormous pair of dark glasses. Jake hadn't ever realised before how attractive red hair was. This made him even crosser. He groaned, and then snapped: 'I suppose – well, I hope – you've come to apologise. I'm not sure I need this now.'
'You're right, I have. I am sorry to bother you, but you must let me grovel.'
'It will be my pleasure.' He waved her in impatiently.
Oh dear. He wasn't at all pleased to see her. Shame. She'd thought this had been an excellent plan. 'Staff needed.' So here she was. And despite her throbbing head Kate was enjoying seeing him. He looked as tired as she did, though, but why? I bet he didn't spend the night throwing up, she thought.
'I am interested in just how many ways you can say sorry for last night. But don't throw up on this expensive carpet or I will have to hurt you.'
The carpet was actually threadbare and barely worth small change, but it gave her a faint glimmer of hope. He obviously had a sense of humour, so this might just work.
'There's nothing else to express but my shame. My deep shame. I am abject. I behaved appallingly.'
'You certainly did. You were a complete idiot and you looked like you got plenty of practice at it.' He shuffled some papers around on his very untidy desk in order to cover up a picture of the kitchen at work, as depicted by Angelica.
'It's no excuse, but I had too much wine on too little food. It won't happen again, I promise. I'm not really like that.'
'No, it won't. People have been booted out of restaurants before now for asking for some salt. I think I am quite within my rights to hope never to see you again.' He hoped he looked as if he really meant it.
'No chance of a job, then?'
Jake's jaw dropped.
'Yes, I know it's a huge cheek but you don't get anywhere without chutzpah, do you?' She took off her glasses and fixed him with what she hoped was an honest, open gaze.
'You want an answer right away? How about: I would sooner cut off my right foot?'
'Of course you would and who would blame you?'
Think, Kate. Except that today this was a bit like asking Steve Redgrave to row through treacle. Food – what did she know about it? Oh. Nothing. But she had flicked through the biography of a chef this morning, in between waiting to throw up.
'You are tired,' she said, trying to sound soothing. 'Your headache is probably worse than mine. You won't have slept properly in weeks and when you do, you have terrible nightmares. You just know your supplier will forget to deliver the mushrooms and no one will tell you until tonight, when you need them. Your punters will complain the steak tartare is undercooked and your commis will think it's really funny to lock a waitress in the walk-in freezer. All you want to do is cook and shout at your staff, but someone has lost the corkscrew and your waitress keeps getting concasse and consommé mixed up.
'Now, you might not be ready to believe this, but I am your salvation. I speak fluent English when I'm sober, which I
will be for the rest of my life, I can assure you. I am intelligent, hard-working and dependable. In time you will forget last night ever happened.'
Despite himself, Jake was intrigued. That description was nothing like his own kitchen, of course, but . . . Then he looked pointedly at her Gucci sunglasses. 'If you can afford those why do you want to work here, where your pay packet will be so small you may need prescription glasses even to see it?'
Excellent. She had got her foot firmly wedged in the door. The rest should be a piece of cake. Oops, don't think about food.
'It's a good point. For the last five years I've been working in advertising, where to be frank, I probably earned more than all your staff put together. I was made redundant. Sure, I had some job offers lined up, but it seemed the right time to start working on the novel I've been planning since I left university. I've given myself a year to get it into print but my savings won't last that long without some extra income.' Well, she was going to write a story of sorts, wasn't she?
'What's it about?'
'What's what about?'
'Your book,' he said patiently.
'Oh.' Blast. She really hadn't thought this one through properly. 'It's, er, an historical novel about smugglers in the Lake District.'
'I think it's been done before,' he said kindly. Bloody hell! He should be too busy to know about literature.
'Well, there's always room for another,' she said firmly.
Jake had a suspicion there was a hidden agenda here, though he couldn't work out what it was. But then waitressing was a job plenty of people did while they were trying to do something else. He had employed budding ballerinas, actresses, even a guy who was considering going into the priesthood. Most of them were still there, toiling away and dreaming, apart from the priest, who had gone off to become an accountant. He thought, I do need another waitress pretty damn quick. She seems quite bright and she can walk in a straight line when she's sober. She's very nice to look at. What the hell has that got to do with anything?
'You look like you can serve food without spilling it, I suppose,' he said, aiming to sounded grudging and barely interested. 'If you work for me you will be smartly dressed and sober at all times. Your shifts will finish when the customers leave – it's their call, not yours. I will not tolerate any whining about your workload, your wages or any pathetic excuses for turning up for work late. Ditto excuses for not turning up at all. Sickness, death, plague – I've heard them all before and none of them moves me in the slightest. So, to sum up, you will adopt an unfailing courtesy to the punters and an unfailing commitment to the work I will pile on you. Oh, and anything you break will be taken out of your wages. Is that clear?'
She wondered if he knew how sexy he was when he glowered. Anyone who worked for him probably spent their holidays chilling out on a labour camp in Siberia, just for light relief.
'The only reason I am offering you a job is because I want to punish you for last night. You can start tonight at five thirty on a week's trial. You won't get paid until the end of the week, just in case you do turn out to be a moron, after all.'
'Thank you so much!'
'Oh, I don't think you are going to be grateful,' he said grimly.
She stood up to escape and promptly dropped her bag. Its contents, included a slightly battered tampon, spilled out across the floor. Jake picked up her diary, which was the sort that had a supposedly uplifting but actually nauseating message at the start of each day. Lydia had bought it for her as a joke.
'Apparently today you will feel the spirit of change flowing through your body,' he read out mockingly.
Outside Kate decided that the only things flowing through her body were blood vessels soaked in alcohol. Never mind, a kip and some invalid food and she would be as right as rain. She felt very pleased with herself. This guy had fascinated her – in a purely professional capacity, of course – from the moment she had first clapped eyes on him. It was shame that when all this was over and Jake found out his kitchen had been harbouring a traitor, he would want her blood in a mixing bowl, but that was the price she would have to pay for being a spy.
Kate spent the afternoon snoozing and dipping into Antony Bourdain's cooking memoirs. In growing disbelief. The chefs seemed to spend their time taking vast quantities of drugs, playing nasty jokes on their colleagues and shagging everyone in sight. She giggled. They sounded a bit like journalists, actually.
In between small bites of dry toast, she logged onto the Internet, where waiters had their own website. The ways they took revenge on awkward customers would put you off eating out ever again. They broke every health and safety rule in the book, and the things they did to people's meals before they served them made her want to gag. Some of it wouldn't go down in a family newspaper. Well, she could get round it with innuendo and, anyway, stuff like this could easily be sent to the national tabloids.
It was time to get ready for work. She cast a longing eye at her bed then focused on the contents of her wardrobe. It was important to get this right. She didn't want to be too smart and therefore too conspicuous, but she was determined to make an impression. She wanted to make Jake respect her and take her into his confidence. Her longsleeved woollen top was flattering and drew people's eyes to her breasts (never a bad thing), and she had a tight black skirt, which skimmed her figure nicely but wasn't obviously tarty. Now for shoes. Fuck-me stilettos were obviously out, but the pointy, kitten heels she wore to work would do.
The last thing she did was tuck a small notebook into her bag. There was bound to be the odd quiet moment when she could nip to the loo and jot down some notes.
When she arrived, feeling surprisingly nervous, the kitchen was already full of people. Jake looked up from where he was chopping furiously.
'Everyone, this is Kate. Kate, this is Tess on starters, Sally on puddings, Godfrey, our trainee, Tom washing up and Kirsty, head waitress, because until you arrived, she was our only waitress. She'll show you the ropes. Godfrey, explain to me why you have just put that knife into the dishwasher pointed end up. Are you planning to throw yourself on it now or later? I would prefer it if you waited until you've filled the salad tray.'
Godfrey said no, I mean yes, and then looked confused.
'Follow me,' said Kirsty. Mystified, Kate watched her dexterously pinch a bread roll on her way out.
'Here you are.' Kirsty tossed the roll across to Hans, who was washing glasses.
'Thanks, Liebchen. Didn't get any tea,' he explained. Then he saw Kate.
Before he could say anything she rushed in, 'I am sorry about last night. I was way out of order. I am really sorry if I got you into trouble.'
He shrugged, then he smiled. 'You did, but I deserved it and everything is OK now.'
'Cool. I like your earring, by the way,' she said.
'Ooh – where did you get that done? Never mind, better tell me later,' said Kirsty. 'OK, we have this system here: that bit is Main – tables one to eight; then there is Annexe – tables nine to twelve, and Back – twelve A, I'm superstitious, to eighteen. The table in the middle is just called Middle.'
Kate looked at Kirsty blankly. What in God's name was she talking about?
Her confusion must have showed in her face because Kirsty explained patiently: 'It's how we make a note of the checks, so we know who we are serving. Oh hell, you really haven't done this before, have you? The checks are the food orders. Get them wrong and you are dead. We write a table number on the checks so we know where to take the food to. You think you are going to remember but, believe me, when it gets busy you won't.
'Always make sure the light over the porch is switched on. Jake gets really mad if we forget. Watch out for that table – it sticks out a bit.' Kate rubbed her thigh. She was going to have a massive bruise there later.
Back in the kitchen, Kirsty continued, 'This is called the pass, where Jake passes the food to you and bollocks you for not taking it quickly enough. Checks go here. Shout them out before putting them down, otherwise Ja
ke goes –'
'Ballistic. Yes, I get the picture,' said Kate. How did he find time to cook if he was so busy having tantrums she wondered.
'Jake is a bit like my mate Amy's dad,' confided Kirsty. 'His real name is Bernard, but we call him Yogi because he's got this really deep voice and it reminds you of –'
'Why is he like Jake?' Kate was a professional at cutting through drivel to get to facts. Kirsty didn't stand a chance with her.
'What? Oh, yes, he likes to act tougher than he really is. He's good at looking fierce but he's really a big softie underneath.'
Kate's first job was to slice bread, one loaf with walnuts, another with onions and rosemary. They smelled heavenly and her mouth watered.
The atmosphere seemed quite calm and controlled, even relaxed. People were slicing and stirring, and Sally was doing something quite complicated with vanilla pods and raspberries. Everything looked and smelled delicious. Jake and Tess were bantering in a friendly manner. She looked like a tough piece who could take care of herself.
Kate studied Jake covertly. He moved with a fluid grace, utterly sure of himself and, despite the jokes, completely focused on what he was doing.
She was setting up the coffee machine when the first guests arrived. Kirsty greeted them, took their coats and a drinks order and gave them menus with the ease borne of long practice. The first check came down to the kitchen swiftly followed by another. Kate tried to match Kirsty's apparently unhurried glide and thought she was doing quite well.
'We've got another booking for eight at eight and two more casuals,' said Kirsty.
Kate sashayed out with another basket of bread. God, people guzzled the stuff, she thought crossly, forgetting that was exactly what she did when she went out.
Oh. Where had all these people come from? She had to push past them to deliver the bread and once there she stopped to chat for a minute. It seemed that waitresses had to do Jake's PR as well as serve. We should be paid more, she thought crossly.
'Where the hell have you been?' snarled Jake when she got back. Kate blinked. She had only been gone a minute. She was yet to realise that a lot could happen in a kitchen during that time. She had left calm and order but now all hell had broken out. There were loads of plates waiting for her and a bear in a bad mood tapping his foot impatiently.
Recipe for Disaster Page 9