'Two soups – Main three; four mains – Annexe nine, and where are the starters from table two? You took them out ages ago. Get a move on, these plates have been here far too long. And you are writing a check, not War and Peace. You don't have to regurgitate the entire menu. I know what's on it – I bloody wrote it! Godfrey – sauté pan, please . . . Godfrey, where's that fucking pan? Sally, that cake has to come out of the oven, NOW! Tess, how's the Parma ham lasting?'
'Fine, Chef, slicing nicely. This rocket's shit, though.'
'Too late, can't do anything about it now. Give them lamb's lettuce instead and tell me sooner next time, will you?'
'Yes, Chef.'
'Right, two lamb – table seven, away now!'
'Ow, shit!'
'Oh, yes, remember to tell them the plates are hot and what the fuck do you think the serving cloths are for?'
Kate couldn't remember where any of the tables were now, or what she was serving or which way round the bloody plate was supposed to go.
'Godfrey, stop gasping and drink some water before you completely dehydrate. Sally, there won't be any raspberries left by nine o'clock at the rate you are using them up – sauté pan, please – what was wrong with that meal – there was nothing wrong with that meal!'
Everyone held their breath.
'Nothing, Boss. The punters are ancient – couldn't manage it all. Said it was wonderful, though,' said Kirsty calmly.
'OK,' said Jake, mollified, chucking a huge slug of brandy into a pan so that the flames shot up to the ceiling. The first time he'd done it, Kate had nearly called the fire brigade.
After that everything became a bit of a blur for her. Sneakily taking notes – ha! That would have been funny if she'd had time to laugh. She didn't have time to blow her nose. She barely had time to breathe. The kitchen had gone into some sort of manic overdrive and not only was she expected to go with it, but apparently she had to develop psychic powers as well and anticipate what everyone was going to say or want. Except that she couldn't. She just wasn't fast enough. It was like trying to ice-skate while wearing wellingtons. She had always felt quite smug about her ability to deal with the stress of a reporters' room and keep her cool, but now she knew there just weren't enough compartments in her head for all the little scenarios in which she was a small, but important, player. Everyone's meals were at different stages and she had to keep up with all of them, like Kirsty was doing, serving coffee to one table, explaining the wine list to another. Kirsty even seemed to know the name of the bloomin' sheep who had donated a leg to the party in the corner!
Kate began to hate the customers. She already loathed Jake and anyone else who gave her another plate to take out, God knows where.
For heaven's sake, salmon or steak, just bloody choose. It's not brain surgery! Don't you idiots realise I have three tables to clear while you are faffing around? Six coffees to get and, oh God, I forgot to ask how table eight wanted their steaks – where is table eight?
She was boiling hot in that stupid jumper, and when she asked Kirsty why the windows weren't open, Kirsty just laughed.
'You might be hot, but the customers aren't. Wear a sensible top next time.'
Bloody customers. They had to have everything their own way!
The kitchen was now a tornado of movement – pans slammed onto hobs, oven doors opened and slammed shut, and knives and spoons flashing. It was like some bizarre off-the-wall ballet, with everyone ducking and diving and, amazingly, not bumping into each other. They were all doing ten different things at once. She felt that she couldn't do anything.
Kirsty was brilliant. Nothing fazed her and her nose wasn't even shiny, whereas Kate could feel the sweat on her forehead and running down her shoulder blades. She quite expected to hear herself dripping every time she took a step.
It was all very upsetting. She hadn't felt this out of control and, well, scared, since her first day at big school.
She was just starting to think that it would be nice to die quietly, if only there was a corner free to do so, when it all seemed to be over and the kitchen, which had turned into a tape on fast forward, now turned back into real time.
'Not a bad night, everyone. A bit quiet, but we will really get into gear at the weekend,' said Jake, wiping down surfaces with great speed. He seemed quite relaxed.
Kate stopped for a minute, but then wished she hadn't, because she now discovered her feet were on fire and there were pains shooting up and down her legs, which she had been too busy to notice before. Her kitten heels, which had been fine for walking round an office, now felt like something the Spanish Inquisition could have used when they required a little information. Her feet had grown to at least a size ten. Any minute now they would burst out of her shoes and explode all over the kitchen floor.
'You did . . . er . . . how can I describe it? Oh, yes – you were crap, but I expect you'll be better tomorrow,' said Kirsty hopefully.
'Why, are we closed?'
Kirsty laughed.
The grim truth dawned on Kate. Oh God, she had to go through all this again tomorrow! This wasn't a job, it was Jake's version of Dante's Hell. They were doomed perpetually to try to fill hordes of gaping mouths for ever and ever, amen. There was no respite. Even now, when all those demanding, picky people had gone, they had to make everything ready for the next lot. She was so tired she could barely remember which way round the knives and forks were supposed to go. Even when she had finally worked it out, she got a bollocking from Kirsty, who seemed to think that hiding the stains on the tablecloths by covering them with wine glasses and salt cellars instead of going to find new ones wasn't environmentally friendly and labour saving – it was idle and slipshod and NOT how they did things at this restaurant.
'Would you want to spend a small fortune eating at a place that did things like that?'
Well, no, she wouldn't, but that was in the days when she hadn't had the slightest consideration for the people who had to work in restaurants.
Finally, the kitchen was back to its sparkling, immaculate, original condition. But Kate watched in amazement and horror. Jake was starting to get pans out again.
'What the hell are you doing? Surely we don't do a midnight shift? Please, God – no!'
'I'm cooking supper for you all,' said Jake in surprise. 'I usually do, you know. Everyone has worked hard and now they are hungry.'
Kate stood and watched him chopping onions and garlic and tossing them deftly in a pan with some tomatoes and black olives. She wasn't hungry, but her legs had gone on strike. Also, it was fascinating how Jake had metamorphosed from a snarling tyrant into a nice human being again.
'My dad says if you promise to leave the garlic at home, he'll come for supper one night,' said Kirsty, getting out bowls and cutlery. 'He said you look a lot like a man he once knew but I don't know how he knows that, 'cos he never wears his specs and we all know he's as blind as a bat without them. Why, only the other day –'
'I don't think I've ever met your dad, have I? How does he know me?'
Kirsty stared at him. 'You've lived here for ages now – well, weeks – of course he knows you. He knows how old you are and that you haven't got any brothers or sisters –'
'Well, that must be weird,' interrupted Godfrey, who had four sisters and never knew a moment's peace at home. 'This is the country, Jake; everyone knows everything about you already,' he explained.
'I can't get the hang of this,' grumbled Jake. 'In London, I could walk the streets all day and never see anyone I knew.'
'Me auntie Mary, you know – the one who was married first to the man whose brother used to help Godfrey's dad with his dry-stone walling? Well, after they split up – which wasn't a day too soon as far as we were concerned – she took up with that John who she's married to now – anyway, the woman who lived in the cottage they bought after they had baby John, my cousin –'
Jake had started to laugh. 'Sorry, do go on, it's just a bit confusing. It's my fault, I'm a bit tired.'
; She gave him a long look, then carried on, talking slowly, as if to an idiot: 'Anyway, she used to say she knew the names of everyone in her village.'
'That's hardly difficult! There's only twenty people live in Hawsgill. It's really just a small street in the middle of nowt!' scoffed Tess.
'Well, I didn't know who it was lived two doors down from us when I was a kid, but that was because the police took them away in the middle of the night,' put in Jake, to stop the argument.
'Ah, so you're a city boy – that's why you work at a manic pace,' said Kate.
'No, that's because I'm a chef,' grinned Jake. 'OK, everyone – eat!'
After the meal, when Kate stood up to go, her legs felt so brittle she thought they might snap. She was going for her coat with the tottering gait of a very old woman, when Jake said: 'See you bright and early tomorrow – oh, sorry – I mean later on today!' There was an unpleasant glint in his eye. The bastard, he had enjoyed seeing her suffer! It was only the thought of a very long, hot bath that got her home.
'Soothing relief for tired muscles' read the label on the box of bubble bath. Hmm, it was going to have to work harder than that. What she really needed was another, better pair of legs.
Easing herself into the bath – yes, there was a huge bruise on her thigh from that bloody table at the start of the evening – she made some essential mental notes. Not for her story – sod that. This was survival stuff.
Run away. I wish.
Buy a very thin cotton blouse so don't have to spend entire evening feeling like a large, melting ice lolly.
Buy some very sensible shoes, no matter how hideous they look. The important thing here is comfort, not style. Also, no one ever seems to look at a waitress anyway, so it won't matter.
Source a supply of industrial-strength anti-perspirant.
Source a supply of industrial-strength painkillers . . .
Then she was asleep.
Chapter Ten
The next day Kate couldn't believe how sore her feet still were. She had blisters the size of shallots on both heels and she had washed her hair three times to try to get the food smells out of it. After the third go she had given up. She would have to resign herself to smelling like a frying pan for ever.
Her legs ached. She was in far too much pain to switch her laptop on.
Bollocks. That was a terrible excuse, even for her. You wrote with your hands, not with your feet, and anyway, you did it sitting down.
Take some bloody aspirin and get to work, she told herself fiercely.
She had to jot down some impressions of last night before she forgot them. She wished, actually, that she could forget them.
She had meant to do some work the night before, but when she woke up in the cooling bath she knew she was being way over-ambitious. 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . .' she had muttered to herself, before falling into bed.
But when you are a writer tomorrow really does come. Deadlines, editor's threats or simple poverty – one of these will eventually force you to put pen to paper.
But she hated this moment, staring at a blank screen that should be filled with words.
What was the time? Damn, only ten minutes since she had last looked. Was there a delaying tactic she could use? The windows of her flat could certainly do with being cleaned because, to Kate's knowledge, they never had been. Her plants, which had long ago learned, as does a camel, that water was something they wouldn't see much of, were in their perpetual state of nearly dead. But watering them would mean getting up and she wasn't going to do that until she absolutely had to. Besides, if she started watering them, they were going to expect this sort of treatment all the time.
What could she write anyway? Something along the lines of how crap a waitress she had been, probably.
She hadn't been in any way prepared for the urgency, stress and aggression you need just to feed a few people. Everyone got caught up in it apart from Kate, a pathetic and incompetent straggler. But Jake was at the centre, the eye of the storm, as it were, an all-seeing eye that could spot faults, cook and bark orders all at the same time. It made her tired just thinking about it, though it was also quite compelling, like getting hooked by a film or a book you never thought you would enjoy.
Jake himself was quite compelling, though undoubtedly a masochist. You had to be to work under such hideous conditions. But she liked the gleam of humour that ran under the surface of his tantrums and she liked the fact that he was so obviously driven. If he looked at his women the way he had looked at that piece of steak last night, it could be quite exciting. This, despite being an absorbing train of thought, would cut no ice with the readers of the Easedale Gazette, though one of the tabloids might take a short piece on 'Shagging the Chef'.
She sighed, wriggled her toes, just to confirm that they still hurt like hell, and proceeded to fill her screen with what she later decided was the biggest load of drivel she had ever written.
Steak was also on Jake's mind that afternoon. He cradled the phone against his ear so he could examine a new blister on his left hand and insult his supplier at the same time.
'Mr Bleasdon, I really don't care if you removed that fillet off the cow with your own bare hands, I don't care if it was hand-reared from grass in your own garden. The meat you sent me was tougher than a rugby player's jockstrap. You would need teeth made of steel to get through it and the sort of digestive tract that my customers, being human, simply don't possess . . . Yes, there is every need to talk like that. Frankly, I'm surprised you've not heard it before. . . . Well, there's always a first time, isn't there? . . . But I know exactly what can be done about it if you –' He waited patiently for a few minutes until the blustering had died down. 'No, Mr Bleasdon, this is what you are going to do. You are going to send me another fillet. It will arrive in my kitchen in half an hour. It will be free, as a sincere apology for trying to fob me off with inedible crap the first time. Then it might be possible for us to continue to do business together.'
Jake then quietly put the phone down on Mr Bleasdon (family butchers since 1886 and never a customer as picky as this) and winced. The blister was now a small wound and about to drip blood onto next week's menu plan. He went into the kitchen to find a plaster and someone else to shout at.
Godfrey was usually a safe bet, though he was coming on in leaps and bounds. There was no way Jake was even considering telling him that yet. This was partly because his enthusiasm was bounding way ahead of his knowledge. He had discovered a recipe for squid that he was dead keen to try out, so Jake let him. Godfrey had interpreted flash-frying it (to keep it tender) as leaving it in the pan for twenty-five minutes while he chopped vegetables. The result was so tough that everyone said the next time they wanted to eat their own shoes they would let him know, thank you.
Now Godfrey was busy telling Sally how oysters screamed in agony when you poured lemon juice on them. 'If they don't squeal you know they're not fresh,' he blundered on, while poor Sally looked on in horror. She was as tender and delicate as the delicious confections she made for dessert and always had to look the other way when the lobsters came in.
Luckily Jake's attention was diverted by the sight of Tess, who looked as though she had been in a fight. Her mouth was very swollen and she was obviously in pain.
'What happened to you?'
'Toothache. It wasn't that bad this morning,' she said with difficulty, out of the corner of her mouth.
'Well, go to the dentist then, woman. You're no use to me like this.'
'Can't.'
'If it's the cost, I can lend you some money,' said Jake, who couldn't, really, but he would find it from somewhere.
''S not that – it's Angel. No one else to look after her. Can't take her with me. She bit the dentist the last time we went, and he had to go to hospital.'
Jake thought about all the work he had to do, trying to juggle his meagre finances so they would cover next week's wages and last week's bills.
'Tell you what, drop her off here.
I'll look after her. She won't be any trouble.'
'You still haven't learned anything about kids, have you, Boss?'
Angel was very pleased to be with Jake. After Tess had gone he found out why. She had Barbie and Ken tucked under each arm.
'Barbie's hungry, Uncle Jake.'
'I'm not surprised. With a figure like that, she looks like she's never had a decent meal in her life.'
'We have to cook her a meal then, Uncle Jake. I want to do what Mummy does.'
Jake looked round his immaculate kitchen and sighed. 'I suppose we could do something simple.'
'What?'
'Er . . . we could make surprise lemon pudding.'
'What's the surprise?' asked Angel suspiciously.
'Well, the lemon, actually,' he admitted.
'I'm not surprised by that at all. I want to make doughnuts. With jam. With lots of jam.'
He could see that this was a plan that had been fermenting for a long time. 'OK. But on one condition . . . no, a condition is . . . oh, never mind. You are NOT to go anywhere near the fryer.'
'But I want to plop them in. Mummy lets me,' she added craftily.
'Mummy is not here. I am. This is my kitchen. There will be no plopping. Take it or leave it.'
He waited while Angel debated with herself whether to give in or fling herself to the floor in a paroxysm of rage and grief. Greed won.
'Yes, then. But I am the stirrer.'
Given the size of the cook it would be better to do this on the floor, which was where most of the flour was going to end up anyway. He would just have to hope the Health Department didn't pick today to pay him a surprise visit. They were due one.
He was quite right about the flour. Angel's shiny red sandals were soon submerged in a sea of white and a fair amount went up her nose. She sneezed enormously into the mixing bowl.
Recipe for Disaster Page 10